Roy Fox Lichtenstein was one of the most innovative artists of the late 20th century. His paintings, based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements, gave a new breath to American art scene.

After graduation from the Franklin School for Boys, a private junior high school, Lichtenstein studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League of New York. His artistic idols were Rembrandt, Daumier and Picasso, and he often said that Picasso’s Guernica was his favorite painting.

In his artwork, Lichtenstein chose colors to imitate the four colors of printers’ inks. He also used Ben Day dots, a system invented to increase the range of colors available to newspaper printing. In late 1960s, Lichtenstein started to paint still life and landscapes, where he explored and deconstructed the notion of the brushstrokes, turning them from the means of expression into a subject.

Lichtenstein’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Modern in London.

Lichtenstein died of pneumonia on September 29, 1997.