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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
Although best known for his paintings that helped to defne Pop Art in the 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein was a prolific innovator and sought to expand his crisp, clean aesthetic to different media. In Imperfect Sculpture from 1995 the artist utilizes the thick black lines, bold primary colors and hatching device of his iconic Pop aesthetic to produce this commanding sculpture. Referencing futuristic scenes in vintage science fiction comic strips, Lichtenstein distills the chromatic and angular narrative of his source imagery into striking three-dimensional forms. Such was the importance of sculpture within the artist’s oeuvre that an example of the present work was included in the 2012 seminal retrospective of the artist’s work organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tate Gallery, London.
One of Pop Art’s superstars along with Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein was a painter, a lithographer, and a sculptor. He made his first foray into sculpture in the ‘40s and ‘50s, producing carved works made from furniture parts as well as various assemblages of wood, stone, and terracotta. His sculptural style matured in the mid-‘60s as he turned toward glazed ceramics, producing increasingly figurative pieces that integrated his iconic pop imagery. These tongue-in-cheek glazed sculptures included busts of female mannequins and the molded stacks of ceramic coffee. In the’70s and ‘80s, Lichtenstein’s sculpture grew to a larger scale, as he was commissioned for a series of major public sculptures including the 1979 Mermaid in Miami Beach and the 1986 Mural with Blue Brushstrokes in New York City.
Although best known for his paintings that helped to defne Pop Art in the 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein was a prolific innovator and sought to expand his crisp, clean aesthetic to different media. In Imperfect Sculpture from 1995 the artist utilizes the thick black lines, bold primary colors and hatching device of his iconic Pop aesthetic to produce this commanding sculpture. Referencing futuristic scenes in vintage science fiction comic strips, Lichtenstein distills the chromatic and angular narrative of his source imagery into striking three-dimensional forms. Such was the importance of sculpture within the artist’s oeuvre that an example of the present work was included in the 2012 seminal retrospective of the artist’s work organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tate Gallery, London.
One of Pop Art’s superstars along with Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein was a painter, a lithographer, and a sculptor. He made his first foray into sculpture in the ‘40s and ‘50s, producing carved works made from furniture parts as well as various assemblages of wood, stone, and terracotta. His sculptural style matured in the mid-‘60s as he turned toward glazed ceramics, producing increasingly figurative pieces that integrated his iconic pop imagery. These tongue-in-cheek glazed sculptures included busts of female mannequins and the molded stacks of ceramic coffee. In the’70s and ‘80s, Lichtenstein’s sculpture grew to a larger scale, as he was commissioned for a series of major public sculptures including the 1979 Mermaid in Miami Beach and the 1986 Mural with Blue Brushstrokes in New York City.