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ROY LICHTENSTEIN
(American, 1923-1997)
Painting in Gold Frame, from Paintings series, 1984
Color lithograph (aluminum), woodcut, screen print and collage on white wove paper
43 1/16 x 32 7/8” image
36 x 46 ¼” sheet
Purchase: University of Kentucky Annual Giving Fund 1984.21

Roy Lichtenstein is considered the leader of the American Pop Art movement, and he is best remembered for his brightly colored whimsical works of art that mimic the subject matter and technical procedures of comic book strips and advertising campaigns. A native New Yorker, Lichtenstein began his artistic training with Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League, where he took a summer course in 1939. Between 1940 to 1943, Lichtenstein studied under the late Fauvist painter Hoyt L. Sherman at Ohio State University. After his military service during World War II, during which time he was in Europe, Lichtenstein returned to Columbus, earning his M.F.A. in 1949. Lichtenstein’s earliest works as an independent artist exhibited the influence of Abstract Expressionism, which was prevalent on the modern American art scene of the 1940s and 1950s. Lichtenstein’s Pop paintings emerged in the early 1960s. These works—which combined text and image and included the flat colors, tonal variations, heavy black lines, and numerous circles that imitated the Ben Day dots used in newspaper printing—became synonymous with his name. Lichtenstein sought anonymity in these works, and indeed, the individual hand of the artist is virtually undetectable.

For his Paintings series of 1984, Lichtenstein created elaborate collages—which included actual brushstrokes, images of brushstrokes, hand-painted papers, and gold or silver leaf—that would be reproduced in print form. In essence, Painting in a Gold Frame is a print of a painting of a painting! This boldly rendered mixed media composition represents a section of a framed Abstract Expressionist painting, replete with dramatic brushstrokes—both naturalistic and cartoon-like—in gray, black, yellow, blue, and red. The edge of the depicted canvas terminates in a vivid black and yellow striped border, which differentiates the imagined black frame from a wall.