Chronology

1923

October 27, 1923

Roy Fox Lichtenstein is born in Manhattan to Milton (1893–1946) and Beatrice (Werner Bernardi; 1896–1991). Milton, a real-estate broker for Lichtenstein & Loeb and co-owner of Garage Realty, is a first-generation German Jewish American. Beatrice, a homemaker and gifted piano player, is of German Jewish descent. The family resides on the Upper West Side in New York at 240 West 98th Street.

1924

Family moves to 310 West 99th Street.

1927

Family resides at 924 West End Avenue at 105th Street.

December 17, 1927

Sister Renée is born.

1928

Fall 1928

Attends kindergarten near 104th Street and West End Avenue.

1931

Over concerns about the Depression, family moves to a smaller apartment at 505 West End Avenue at 84th Street.

Fall 1931

Begins first grade at P.S. 9. Develops a strong interest in drawing and science and later recalls spending time designing model airplanes. Frequently visits the American Museum of Natural History. Favorite radio shows include The Shadow, Jack Armstrong, Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician.

1934

Family moves to a much larger seven-room apartment at 305 West 86th Street with his maternal grandfather. Father’s business is unaffected by the Depression.

1935

October 10, 1935

George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess debuts at the Alvin Theater. Makes pen-and-ink sketches of the show that were later discarded.¹Oral history interview with Charles Batterman by Avis Berman, August 2002, RLF Archives.

1936

Fall 1936

Starts eighth grade at Franklin School for Boys, a private school in Manhattan. Interest in art is piqued, offering a respite from school instruction. During high school, studies French and Latin.

1937

Enrolls in Saturday morning watercolor classes at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons School of Design). Paints still lifes and flower arrangements using watercolor and opaque watercolor; also works directly from the model.²Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.]

During high school, studies the clarinet and plays the piano. Visits jazz clubs with friend Don Wolf. Forms a small band.

Summer 1937

Makes "romantic watercolors" of the forest trees and lake while at camp in Maine.³Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.]

Receives first art book, Thomas Craven’s Modern Art: The Men, the Movements, the Meaning.⁴Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.]

1938

January 16, 1938

Attends Benny Goodman’s first concert at Carnegie Hall. Begins doing renditions of jazz music.

1939

April 30, 1939

Opening of the 1939–40 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, whose theme is "Building the World of Tomorrow." Is a frequent visitor.

1940

June 1940

Graduates from Franklin.

July 1–August 9, 1940

Attends Reginald Marsh’s painting class at the Art Students League. Learns to paint directly from the model. Studies anatomical drawing and Renaissance techniques such as glazing and underpainting, which he applies to quotidian subjects. Later recalls Marsh adding musculature and the like to his paintings. Feeling that Marsh’s paintings have a "brassy … very commercial" quality, is ultimately dissatisfied with the course’s insistence on technique over process.⁵Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.] In most paintings from the time, strives for exact representation of model.

September 23, 1940

Begins undergraduate degree at the Ohio State University (OSU) in the College of Education. First art classes are Art Appreciation, taught by Frank Roos, and Advanced Freehand Drawing. Other classes include Education Survey, Field Artillery and Botany. Pledges Phi Sigma Delta and moves into the fraternity house at 1968 Iuka Avenue in Columbus.

November 7–December 8, 1940

Sees Picasso’s masterwork Guernica, 1937 in an exhibition, likely in Ohio.⁶Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.]

Paintings of the period include abstract works based on landscapes, still lifes and figure studies.

1941

Winter 1941

Classes at OSU include Elementary Design and Elementary Freehand Drawing, along with Field Artillery and Comprehension and Reading.

Spring 1941

Takes Drawing from the Head, taught by Robert Gatrell, and Introduction to Literature, as well as continued classes in field artillery.

Fall 1941

Enrolls in History through the Ages, taught by Robert Fanning, a yearlong survey course of Western, Asian and Indian art history. Textbook is Art through the Ages by Helen Gardner, in which he makes several sketches. Takes first drawing class taught by Hoyt Sherman, Drawing from Life. Learns about the concept of kinesthetic drawing, which is based on psychological optics. In 1945, Sherman realizes his "flash lab," a totally darkened room in which a tachistoscope projects slides of objects in quick succession. Students draw what they see based on the automatic recall of afterimages formed on their retinas. Does not experience Sherman’s flash lab, but his idea of art—reflected in statements such as, "Organized perception is what art is all about"⁷Lichtenstein in the interview Swenson 1963, p. 62. —is deeply influenced by Sherman.

Moves to North High Street off campus in Columbus.

Picasso’s Blue Period is a significant influence despite pervasiveness of Regionalism at OSU.

1942

Winter 1942

Attends Intermediate Design with Roos, and Sculpture with Erwin Frey, where he works with Plasticine. Frey and Charles Batterman (the artist's roommate) recall Lichtenstein making a blue ceramic water buffalo sculpture. Later subjects include mechanical drawing, economics, humanities and the natural sciences.⁸Oral history interview with Eugene Friley by Avis Berman, June 20, 2003, RLF Archives; Oral history interview with Charles Batterman by Avis Berman, August 2002, RLF Archives.

Paintings at university are primarily on paper or inexpensive chipboard. The students use big cans of soybean-based paint similar to water-based house paint.⁹Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.

Moves to student housing; creates drawing of roommate’s feet soaking in a basin. Among works admired at the time are Picasso’s Guernica and Honoré Daumier’s The Third-Class Carriage, c. 1862–64.¹⁰Oral history interview with Charles Batterman, August 2002, RLF Archives.

Spring 1942

Takes first class in oil painting with James Grimes, where students begin to stretch their own canvas. Also takes Evolution of Design with Wayne Anderla.

Summer 1942

Enrolls in Portrait Painting with Grimes, Principles of Drawing and Principles of Economics.

Fall 1942

Completes classes in drawing, as well as Principles of Advertising and Technical Problems.

1943

February 6, 1943

Drafted and inducted into the US Army. Enters active service three days later.

March 1943

Begins basic training at Camp Hulen, Texas, an anti-aircraft training base.

June 1943–March 1944

Applies to A.S.T.P. (Army Special Training Program). Fails medicine exam, but passes in languages. Army cuts languages program and instead sends him for engineering training at DePaul University, Chicago. Takes classes in math, chemistry, physics, geography, speech and history; twenty-four weeks in, Army cancels program.

Travels to Loop in downtown Chicago to hear jazz.

1944

January 1944

Passes his physical exam for the Air Corps.

February 1944

Transferred to Fort Sheridan in Illinois. Studies French.

March 1944

Arrives at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, for pilot-training program. Hitchhikes with pals to New Orleans. Due to the enormous number of casualties in the Battle of the Bulge and the consequent need for soldiers to replace them, the pilot-training program is terminated a month later.

April 1944

Arrives at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and reports to 69th Infantry Division, Ninth Army headquarters. Serves as orderly to a two-star major general. Duties include enlarging William H. Mauldin cartoons in Stars and Stripes for commanding officer.

June 1944

Works as draftsman and artist in G-3 (Plans and Training).

August 1944

Draws maps in the Intelligence Section of the Engineers Battalion, 69th Infantry Division, Ninth Army.

Works from this period include black ink or charcoal drawings of the rugged terrain of Mississippi swamps.¹¹Lichtenstein, Roy. Letter to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein. October 9, 1944. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

December 1944

Division is shipped to Europe. Army has a library; there reads Edgar Allan Poe and philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard and John Locke.¹²Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein by Frederic Tuten, January 22, 1988.

December 21, 1944

In London, sees Paul Cézanne and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec works in an exhibition. Buys a book on Chinese painting and sends it home in a duffle along with a collection of African masks.

Continues to draw in conté crayon, black ink and ink wash on paper. Subjects include trees in London parks.

1945

January 1945

Begins combat operations in France, working in an office a mile from the front. Does quite a bit of drawing in between Army tasks, such as maintaining roads and bridges. On a furlough to Paris, buys three portfolios of reproductions of Rembrandt etchings.¹³Lichtenstein, Roy. Letter to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein. July 1, 1945. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

February 1945

Arrives in Belgium.

April 1945

Writes home reporting only fair results with drawings and paintings in black-and-white tempera.

May 1945

69th Infantry Division is the first to meet up with the Soviet Army. Awarded a battle star ribbon although not directly involved in the fighting. Transferred to the Ninth Army. Continues combat operations in Germany.

Receives oil paints from home.

June 1945

Sent to Oberammergau, a picturesque German town in the Bavarian Alps. Works at the Army’s Information and Education School. Prepares and delivers half-hour lectures on the War in Europe and the Pacific as well as the Japanese Army based on information he reads in Fortune magazine.¹⁴Lichtenstein, Roy. Letter to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein. June 8, 1945. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

July 1945

Paints in gouache.

September 1945

Travels by rail to Paris on a three-day pass and visits the Louvre Museum. Remarks on El Greco’s Christ on the Cross Adored by Two Donors, c. 1590, Cézanne’s The Card Players, 1890–92, and Daumier’s La Blanchisseuse, 1863. At the Louvre bookshop, buys a small book on Fauvist Georges Rouault.¹⁵Lichtenstein, Roy. Letter to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein. October 1, 1945. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. In a letter home, writes of doing stacks of drawings and of intention to study painting, citing Picasso, Rouault and Matisse.¹⁶Lichtenstein, Roy. Letter to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein. October 7, 1945. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Buys books on Francisco Goya’s etchings and Georges Seurat’s paintings, even though he later remarks that he was not that inspired by latter’s work.¹⁷Lichtenstein, Roy. Letter to Milton and Beatrice Lichtenstein. October 4, 1945. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation records and Roy Lichtenstein papers. Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

October 15, 1945

Selected to attend a French Language and Civilization course at the Sorbonne in Paris through the Army’s civilian agency AEP program. Begins classes in late October where he resides at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris on Boulevard Jourdan located in the southern outskirts of the city. Passes Picasso’s studio on Rue des Grands-Augustins but decides not to intrude.¹⁸Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.] Completes four hundred hours.

December 2, 1945

Leaves Europe for the United States.

December 5, 1945

Reports home to Fort Dix, New Jersey, after learning that his father is very ill.

1946

January 11, 1946

Discharged from the Army with the rank of PFC (Private First Class) as a Draftsman 070 and returns home. Regularly visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art with mother and sister.

February 13, 1946

Milton Lichtenstein dies.

March 1946

Returns to OSU to complete degree. Courses include History of Renaissance Art and Watercolor Painting.

June 1946

Receives BFA degree from OSU, College of Education, School of Fine and Applied Arts. Lives and works in a small room in a converted mess hall off campus.

September 1946

Joins OSU School of Fine and Applied Arts faculty as an instructor.

October 1946

Teaches drawing and design courses. Creates own version of a flash lab, stacking boxes in a darkened room and asking students to draw the afterimage using charcoal or crayon on paper.

Lives at 804 Neil Avenue in downtown Columbus.

Creates stone-like sculptures. Figures have Picassoesque features but seem almost pre-Columbian in style. Tries painting geometric abstractions in the style of Piet Mondrian, but with a different palette. Fewer than ten canvases were made and they were later destroyed.

1947

January 1947

Enrolls in the Graduate School of Fine and Applied Arts at OSU. Travels with Charles Csuri to see various art exhibitions in New York.

Spring 1947

Classes include Technical Problems and Water Color Painting with Bradley.

Occasionally returns to New York with friends Stanley Twardowicz and Csuri to visit galleries, especially Charles Egan and Betty Parsons Galleries.

Paintings of this period depict bulbous figures with animated features. Continues to work in ceramic. The artist calls his work of this period "a little bit like Klee, or maybe Miro."¹⁹Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein by Frederic Tuten, February 25, 1971.

Around this time, gets a centrifuge casting machine to create silver jewelry using lost wax process. Buys a small electrical kiln for enameling.

Fall 1947

Enrolls in Advanced Research Problems and Research in Art History: Criticism and Philosophy of Art.

1948

May 29–June 18, 1948

First group exhibition in New York, at Chinese Gallery, which shows American art along with classical Chinese art forms, including ceramics.

Fall 1948

Classes include Art History Research and Criticism.

Produces pastels, oils and drawings. Subjects include musicians, landscapes and fairy tales.

Begins showing work at the new location of the Ten-Thirty Gallery, located on the third floor of the State Theater Building in Cleveland. Algesa O’Sickey is one of the directors and is the wife of faculty colleague Joseph O’Sickey. Modernist architect Robert Little provides the sketches for the L-shaped floor space.

1949

March 1949

Receives MFA from OSU. Completes MFA thesis, "Paintings, Drawings, and Pastels," which includes a series of poems celebrating various artists, including Matisse, Klee, Picasso, Rousseau, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Lautrec, Rembrandt and the Song Dynasty painter Ma Yuan.

June 12, 1949

Marries Isabel Sarisky (née Wilson b. July 26, 1921 in Van Wert, Ohio; d. Sept. 25, 1980), who worked at Ten-Thirty Gallery (1515 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland), whom he meets through the O’Sickeys earlier that year. She is recently divorced from prominent Cleveland artist Michael Sarisky (b. 1906; d. January 12, 1974). Richard Gosminski takes over Isabel’s role as assistant director when she moves to Columbus and she begins to paint. Algesa O’Sickey steps down as director in December.

Summer 1949

Begins class work toward PhD, taking courses in Minor Problems in Painting, Technical Problems: Painting and Minor Problems: Arts Education.

Fall 1949

Takes painting classes with Sherman and Grimes.

December 7–30, 1949

Ten-Thirty Gallery exhibits twenty oils and pastels along with work by ceramists Harry Schulke and Charles Lakosky. Works are described by Cleveland Press as "flat abstracts with objects like animals, plants and faces being faintly recognizable."²⁰Frankel 1949

Sees book on nineteenth-century American painter George Catlin from colleague Roy Harvey Pearce. North American Indian themes begin to appear in paintings and drawings in 1950.²¹Oral history interview with Marie and Roy Harvey Pearce by Avis Berman, August 1, 2001, RLF Archives.

1950

Rents a two-story house at 1496 Perry Street in Columbus with Isabel, which doubles as a studio.

Begins to use paint cans full of sand to counterbalance an old easel in order to rotate canvases. Uses a mirror to see paintings upside down to abstract the subject matter and concentrate on compositional unity.²²Oral history interview with Tom Doyle by Avis Berman, January 21, 2002, RLF Archives.

Summer 1950

Takes Mural Painting, Research: Oil and Watercolor Painting and final Technical Problems class.

July 28, 1950

Denied tenure at OSU.²³Letter from Frank Seiberling, Jr., Director School of Fine and Applied Arts, OSU, to Roy Lichtenstein, July 28, 1950, RLF Archives; Oral history interview with Sidney Chafetz by Adrienne Chafetz, March 6, 2005, RLF Archives.

Flowers and birds, along with medieval imagery, account for much of subject matter. According to friends Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey, he was influenced by their book on the Bayeux Tapestry.²⁴Oral history interview with Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey by Avis Berman, March 5, 2002, RLF Archives.

August 1950

Woodcut To Battle takes first prize at the Ohio State Fair.

Isabel finds work at Arts and Crafts, the interior design department of Tibbals-Crumley-Musson Architects; coordinates exhibitions of artisan jewelry and ceramics.

Regularly attends jazz Philharmonic performances in Columbus. Teaches himself to play the flute.

1951

Starts to bring paintings to galleries in New York, such as M. Knoedler and Sidney Janis. During his teaching years, goes to Cedar Tavern on University Place and sometimes talks to artists such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, but is too shy to really get to know them.²⁵Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein by Billy Klüver and Julie Martin, August 16, 1990, RLF Archives.

March 21–May 20, 1951

To Battle is exhibited in a Brooklyn Museum juried show, Fifth National Print Annual Exhibition, and receives a museum purchase award.

April 30–May 12, 1951

First solo exhibition in New York, at Carlebach Gallery, which includes: oils and pastels; prints rendered in muted pinks, blues and mauves; and assemblages made from wood, metal pieces and found objects such as screws and drill buffers.

June 1951

Moves to Cleveland and sets up home and studio on the second floor of the Music Center Building at 1150 Prospect Avenue, across from Gray’s Armory. Isabel finds work as an assistant interior decorator at Jane L. Hanson, Inc.

Paints an Early Renaissance-style self-portrait.

August 1951

Draws fairground scenes in sketchbooks.²⁶Oral history with Stanley Twardowicz by Avis Berman and Jack Cowart with Tom Kennaugh, January 14, 2002, RLF Archives.

King on Horseback takes first prize in sculpture at the Ohio State Fair.

December 2, 1951

Exhibits "colorful silkscreen prints" for The "Craftsman" Christmas exhibition of Art Colony Galleries in Cleveland.²⁷Cleveland Plain Dealer 1951

December 31, 1951–January 12, 1952

Solo exhibition at John Heller Gallery in New York, consisting of sixteen paintings based on American frontier themes and several self-portraits as a knight. Sherman contributes a brief preface to the show’s brochure. One painting in the show, The Death of the General, is reproduced in Artnews and Art Digest.

Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York (32 E. 57th St.) begins carrying his jewelry.

Begins to incorporate titles and advertising copy in woodcut compositions and paintings such as Emigrant Train After William Ranney.

Already copying comic book images into notebooks.²⁸Oral history interview with Julian Stanczak by Avis Berman, January 31, 2003, RLF Archives.

1952

Contributes work to juried exhibitions, including Denver City Building, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the University of Nebraska. A charcoal of that year, Two Indians (Study), is included in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

March 2–22, 1952

Solo exhibition at the Art Colony Galleries. Show elicits mixed responses. One pencil drawing, which includes a photo of a castle taped onto it, is described by a Cleveland News art critic as “truly like the doodling of a five-year-old.” Is referred to as an “odd talent.”²⁹Bruner 1952

Decorates display windows and floors part-time at a Halle Brothers’ Euclid Huron department store.

1953

January 26–February 7, 1953

Second solo exhibition at John Heller Gallery, consisting of oils and watercolors based on Americana themes. The Statesman is reproduced in Artnews in black and white.

September 20–October 5, 1953

Contributes work to the third season opening exhibition of the Art Colony Galleries.

November 1953

Receives an award for woodcut A Cherokee Brave in the Contemporary Printmaking Exhibition at OSU.

Works from his apartment at 11483 Hessler Road in Cleveland. Audits classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

1954

Moves to an apartment at 1863 Crawford Street in Cleveland. Teaches drawing at the Cooper School, a commercial art school in Cleveland. Around this time, designs logo featuring a knife, spoon and fork for Hy-Decker Industrial Caterers, Inc., a commercial catering company run by his friends Margaret and George (Hy) Silverman.

March 8–27, 1954

Third solo exhibition at John Heller Gallery, consisting of paintings on American folklore themes and others that feature depictions of clock and gear parts, based on engineering blueprints that echo French’s Engineering Drawing, illustrated by Sherman. Critics Robert Rosenblum and Porter review the show for Art Digest and Artnews, respectively.

October 7–24, 1954

Included in Cleveland Museum of Art’s show of "spontaneous and unrehearsed drawings" by local artists,³⁰Frankel 1954 although his works are consistently rejected for the museum’s coveted invitational May Show.

October 9, 1954

Son David Hoyt Lichtenstein is born.

Mid-1950s

Creates mosaic tabletops for clients of Isabel, with welding done by friend Bryce Ford.³¹Oral history interview with Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey by Mary Lee Corlett, April 20, 1992, RLF Archives; Oral history interview with Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey by Avis Berman, March 5, 2002, RLF Archives.

1955

January 1, 1955

Weatherford Surrenders to Jackson is purchased by collectors and donated to the Butler Museum of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.

January 9, 1955

Art Colony Galleries exhibits thirteen paintings in a three-person show that also includes Christine Miller and Louis Penfield. Cleveland Plain Dealer describes paintings in the show as "Klee-like and surprising."³²Metzler 1955

October–November 1955

Displays jewelry at the Brooklyn Museum Gallery Shop.

Creates several wall-mounted assemblages of painted wood.

Works on the "before" models of a low-income Cleveland neighborhood for a proposed renovation project designed by Little and photographed by Margaret Bourke-White for Life magazine. One contribution is to paint graffiti in the miniature alley.

1956

Creates first proto-Pop work, a lithograph called Ten Dollar Bill (Ten Dollars).

Returns to imagery of the Wild West.

March 10, 1956

Son Mitchell Wilson Lichtenstein is born.

Mechanism, Cross Section is purchased by the same collectors who bought Weatherford Surrenders to Jackson and is donated to the Flint Institute of Arts.

1951–57

Works at various jobs in Cleveland, most lasting about six months each. Hand-paints black-and-white dial markings on volt and amp meters for Hickok Electrical Instrument Co. Travels frequently to New York. Introduced by Stanley Landesman to Herman Cherry and Warren Brandt.

1957

Buys first home at 2421 Edgehill Road in Cleveland Heights and sets up a studio there.

Works as an engineering draftsman making furniture in the Product and Process Department at Republic Steel Company.

January 8–26, 1957

Solo exhibition at John Heller Gallery, consisting of paintings on Americana themes. Works described by critics as "acrid in color" and "flatly patterned … spontaneously felt depictions of a grown-up's child-world."³³Sawin 1957; N., A. "Roy Lichtenstein." Pictures on Exhibit, January 1957.

February 1957

Invited to exhibit with Group 5, an association of Cleveland artists who banded together in defiance of their omissions from the May show at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Lichtenstein shows several paintings and constructions.

May 1957

Shows lithographs at Karamu House, Cleveland, a space featuring artists working in dance, printmaking, theater and writing.

Summer 1957

Offered assistant professorship of art at State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego to teach industrial design. Hoping to get closer to New York, accepts the position.

Moves home and studio to 11 West 6th Street in Oswego, where his family shares a two-family house.

Uses an opaque projector to trace a large image of Mickey Mouse on son Mitchell’s bedroom wall.

Abstract Expressionist style appears in paintings. Later recalls that these canvases were used as drop cloths for first Pop-inspired works.³⁴Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein by Clare Bell, 1993, RLF Archives.

Style changes to a lyrical abstraction with hatched brushwork featuring images found in books of eighteenth-century French salon paintings of François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Antoine Watteau and rococo oils of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, among others.

1958

March 1958

Six oil paintings are among those Heller sends for an exhibition in Los Angeles.³⁵Oswegonian 1958c

June 1958

Approaches Csuri’s dealer in New York, Harry Salpeter, whose gallery is across from Heller’s on 57th Street, about representation. Salpeter turns him down.

August 1958

Teaches Industrial Art Design summer course at SUNY Oswego and graduate course in painting. Hosts salon-style open-house evenings for students.

Drawings include renderings of cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny using brush and india ink.

Leaves John Heller. Participates in a group show at Condon Riley Gallery in New York. Housed in a Beaux-Arts-style townhouse a floor below the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, the gallery space featured walls that simulated dark velvet with a floating ceiling that hid the lighting.

1959

Moves with family to 52 Church Street in Oswego. Maintains a studio in one of the bedrooms. Continues to teach Industrial Arts during the summer and graduate courses in painting.

March 1959

Exhibits oil paintings in Sixth Annual Central Art Exhibition at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts.

Spring 1959

Contributes the cover design for Polemic, one of two prints done for the magazine published under a grant from the Adelbert College Student Council at Western Reserve University, Cleveland. His highly abstract image in black with the title of the magazine in red lettering is hand printed on a commercial letterpress printer.

June 2–27, 1959

Untitled abstractions are shown for the first time in a solo exhibition at Condon Riley Gallery in New York. Paintings feature scant traces of bright color on an unprimed background; some contain heavy impasto and traces of instant coffee.³⁶Busche 1988, p. 207

Finishes a group of early Brushstroke works created by wrapping a towel around his arm, dipping it against a palette with several different colors on it, and then dragging it across the canvas in broad strokes. These are later exhibited alongside his Pop Brushstrokes at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in 2001.³⁷Oral history interview with Joseph and Algesa O’Sickey by Avis Berman, March 5, 2002, RLF Archives.

1960

Spring 1960

Resigns from SUNY Oswego after accepting assistant professorship of art at Douglass College, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey. Teaches Art Structure and Design and Advanced Design beginning July 1. Shares an office with Geoffrey Hendricks.

Robert Miller, a future dealer, serves as his teaching assistant.

Moves into a house at 66 S. Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, New Jersey, where he sets up his studio in the bedroom. Bolts a two-by-four to the ceiling, to which he attaches clip-on lights. Paintings are hung throughout the house.

June 6–24, 1960

Sees works by Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, in New Form—New Media I, organized by Steve Joy.

Fall 1960

Introduced by colleague Allan Kaprow to Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, George Segal (then completing his MFA) and Robert Whitman. Through Robert Watts, another professor in the department, meets George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles and George Maciunas, all artists who will be involved with Fluxus.

Attends some of Kaprow’s informal Happenings.

Hangs untitled abstract canvases in former student Tom Doyle’s building so he can show them to Henry Geldzahler, curator at the Met, and Ivan Karp of Leo Castelli Gallery, but Doyle forgets to unlock the door to the building. Brings them to Leo Castelli Gallery and shows them to the dealer and his former wife, Ileana Sonnabend.

1961

January 1961

Shows Kaprow the semiabstract paintings with cartoon figures embedded in paint.

January 11–27, 1961

Exhibits twelve abstract ribbon paintings at Douglass College. One work is painted on several pieces of refrigerator-crate plywood nailed together.

February 1961

Meets Art Department secretary Letty Lou Eisenhauer.

June 1961

Tells Eisenhauer about his new painting Look Mickey. First Pop works demonstrate what the artist refers to as paintings without any expressionism in them. Pushes oil paint through the holes of a plastic dog-grooming brush without its bristles to create dot effect. Works feature blown-up versions of advertised consumer goods and other well-known characters including Popeye and Wimpy, as well as panels from the comic strips Buck Rogers, Steve Roper and Winnie Winkle. Experiments with other ways to apply dots, from using a lightly loaded paintbrush, which he drags over the canvas, to employing a small, square, handmade stencil made from thin aluminum with hand-drilled holes. Uses pre-primed white canvas. Flat areas are done in primary oil paint colors and outlined with black. Some paintings are done exclusively in black and white or blue and white. Creates several diptychs joined with hinges.

Works on a series of finished black-and-white drawings in pen, felt-tip marker, brush and india ink. Some feature pochoir, a stenciling technique of pushing india ink through a small metal grid.

Fall 1961

Kaprow arranges a meeting with Ivan Karp, director of Leo Castelli. Brings The Engagement Ring, Girl with Ball, Look Mickey and Step-on Can with Leg. Castelli contacts the artist several weeks later and agrees to represent him. In the meantime, Ileana Sonnabend visits the Highland Park studio with Billy Klüver. Irving Blum also visits. Sonnabend and Blum also offer to represent him.

September 22–October 14, 1961

Girl with Ball is added to Castelli’s show An Exhibition in Progress, the first public showing of one of his Pop works. The show’s concept is to start with a group of works and slowly replace them with Robert Rauschenberg’s works until it becomes a full Rauschenberg show, and then begin to slowly replace Rauschenberg’s works with others’ works until it turns back into a group show by the end of its run.

October 1961

Consigns first works for sale to Castelli, including Washing Machine, Emeralds, Roto Broil and Keds.

November 1961

Mr. Bellamy, Yellow Garbage Can, Red Flowers, Step-on Can with Leg, Black Flowers, I Can See the Whole Room! ... And There’s Nobody in It!, Girl and Rope Ladder, Cup of Coffee and Bread in Bag are sent to Castelli for sale.

November 9, 1961

Castelli sells his first work I Can See the Whole Room! ... And There’s Nobody in It! to Burton and Emily Hall Tremaine of Meriden, Connecticut.

November 30, 1961

New York collector Richard Brown Baker buys Washing Machine.

December 1961

A third wave of works is consigned to Castelli, including Turkey, Roller Skates, Electric Cord, Bathroom and Transistor Radio, which includes an actual aerial antenna.

December 12, 1961

Chicago collector Walter A. Netsch buys Black Flowers.

Meets Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Uses identical source imagery to start a group of portraits, the first two named after Kaprow and Karp.

Warhol takes his own paintings to Leo Castelli and shows them to Karp. Karp shows Warhol Girl with Ball.

Visits Warhol’s studio at 1342 Lexington Avenue in New York with Karp and sees Warhol’s comic-strip and consumer-goods paintings.

1962

Returns to live and work in Highland Park. 

Around this time starts to project and trace drawings (or source material such as comic or newspaper clippings) onto canvas using a Postoscope. 

Experiments with different acrylic paints such as Liquitex. Chooses Bocour Magna as his preferred medium and uses a Magna-based varnish between coats. Begins to use an industrial perforated metal screen from Beckley Perforating Co. in Garwood, N.J., for his simulated Benday dots. Continues to use oil paint for dots and, later, diagonals.³⁸For more information on the artist's materials, see Guide to the Reader: 4.7 PAINTING

Three works on paper Baked Potato (RLCR 672, RLCR 673 and RLCR 674) likely feature acrylic paint.

First paintings based on panels from All-American Men of War comics, such as Blam and Takka Takka. The five-panel work Live Ammo features one diptych and three other panels (RLCR 706, RLCR 707 and RLCR 709).

First paintings based on reproductions of works by Picasso and Cézanne, as well as Portrait of Madame Cézanne, an enlarged version of a black-and-white outline diagram by Cézanne scholar Erle Loran.

Isolates the words "Art" and "In" on canvas. Later recalls wanting to make one with the word 'Flat' but soon abandons the idea.

Makes first commissioned print, On, for Klüver and noted Dada and Surrealist expert Arturo Schwarz for The International Anthology of Contemporary Engravings: The International Avant-Garde: America Discovered, Volume 5 (published in 1964 by Galleria Schwarz, Milan).

Switches from ink to pencil for finished black-and-white drawings. Develops a technique for black-and-white drawings that involves placing a sheet of paper on a window screen and rubbing it with graphite to achieve the look of machine-applied dots. Finished drawings often depict subjects different from those in paintings and do not require preliminary sketches. Simultaneously works on paintings and these drawings in no clear chronological order.

February 10–March 3, 1962

First solo show of paintings at Leo Castelli.

February 26, 1962

Newsweek magazine reviews Leo Castelli show and reproduces Girl with Ball.

March 1962

Is linked for the first time with Dine, Oldenburg and James Rosenquist as a cohesive group (together with Peter Sau and Watts) in Max Kozloff’s article, "Pop Culture, Metaphysical Disgust, and the New Vulgarians," in Art International.

April 1962

Donald Judd reviews Leo Castelli show for Arts Magazine.

April 3–May 13, 1962

The Kiss is included in 1961, a group exhibition at Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, curated by Douglas MacAgy.

May 1962

Consigns a number of black-and-white pencil drawings to Castelli.

May 26–June 30, 1962

Black-and-white drawings are shown for the first time in Drawings at Leo Castelli.

June 15, 1962

Among several artists featured in "Something New Is Cooking" in Life magazine.

August 6–31, 1962

Art of Two Ages: The Hudson River School and Roy Lichtenstein at Mi Chou Gallery in New York features Pop paintings along with paintings by Albert Bierstadt, John William Casilear, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey and Asher B. Durand. Mi Chou Gallery borrowed the nineteenth-century works from Kennedy Galleries in New York.

September 25–October 19, 1962

Comic-strip and consumer-goods paintings are shown on the West Coast for the first time in the group exhibition New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum, curated by Walter Hopps.

October 24–November 7, 1962

Included in Art 1963: A New Vocabulary, organized by Joan Kron and Audrey Sabol for the Art Council of the YM/YWHA in Philadelphia, featuring paintings, collages, assemblages, combines and machines by Brecht, Dine, Johns, Kaprow, Marisol, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Segal, Jean Tinguely and Watts. Exhibition brochure includes statements by the artists and a dictionary of terms written by Klüver to describe the new art. Contributes a handwritten word balloon with the words, "DYNAMIC: KPOW! WHUMP! TAKKA TAKKA!! VAROOM!" to the catalogue.

October 31–December 1, 1962

Included in Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition New Realists, featuring "factual paintings and sculpture" by American and European artists, along with Dine, Yves Klein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Mimmo Rotella, Segal, Tinguely and Warhol.³⁹Janis 1962

November 1962

Included in Artnews essay, "The New American 'Sign Painters,'" by Gene R. Swenson, along with Dine, Stephen Durkee, Robert Indiana, Rosenquist, Richard Smith and Warhol.

Work is included for the first time as part of MoMA’s Art Lending Service.

November 18–December 15, 1962

Takka Takka is included in My Country ’Tis of Thee at the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles, along with works by Indiana, Johns, Edward Kienholz, Marisol, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Rosenquist, Warhol and Tom Wesselmann.

Head: Red and Yellow is acquired by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

December 4, 1962

On "The Unpopular Artist in a Popular Society" panel held in New York.

December 13, 1962

Attends symposium on Pop art at MoMA. Speakers include Dore Ashton, Henry Geldzahler, Hilton Kramer, Stanley Kunitz and Leo Steinberg, with Peter Selz as moderator. "Pop" art is chosen as name for the new movement. Other artists in the audience include Duchamp, Maciunas, Rosenquist and Warhol.

December 26, 1962

Among eleven artists chosen to create an outdoor mural for Johnson’s Theaterama building, part of the New York State Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, 1964–65.

1963

Begins group of canvases depicting women from the DC Comics' Girls’ Romances and Secret Hearts series. Benday dots are doubled in areas, such as lips, by shifting the screen. Some are done in red and blue to create the effect of purple. Several canvases feature mad scientists from science fiction comic books.

Hires assistant to paint in Benday dots.

Begins to use lithographic rubbing crayon in his finished black-and-white drawings to achieve larger, more uniform, machine-looking dots.

Moves for a brief period of time into a studio on Broad Street near Coenties Slip, his first studio in New York

March 14–June 12, 1963

Included in Six Painters and the Object at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, organized by Lawrence Alloway, along with Dine, Johns, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist and Warhol. The show travels throughout the United States.

April 1963

Three paintings are included in Pop! Goes the Easel at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, organized by MacAgy.

April 1–20, 1963

First exhibition at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, featuring works from 1961–63.

April 18–June 2, 1963

Included in The Popular Image at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, organized by Alice Denney.

April 28–May 26, 1963

Leo Castelli lends Girl at Piano and Magnifying Glass for Popular Art: Artistic Projections of Common American Symbols at the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City.

May 10–June 20, 1963

Included in first European group show, De A à Z: 31 Peintures américains choisis par The Art Institute of Chicago, at the American Cultural Center in Paris.

May 17, 1963

Time magazine publishes a letter by comic artist William Overgard stating that I Can See the Whole Room! ... And There’s Nobody in It! is taken from the last panel of his August 6, 1961, comic strip Steve Roper. Overgard’s panel and the painting are both reproduced.

June 1963

Commissioned by poet Walasse Ting to contribute illustrations to his collection of poems entitled 1¢ Life.

June 5–30, 1963

First solo exhibition in Europe, at Galerie Sonnabend in Paris. Travels to Paris for the opening, which is the first time back since the war.

Summer–Winter 1963

Works are included in shows in Lausanne, Toronto, London, Turin and Gstaad.

Summer 1963

Brings the family to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he spends time with Karp and his family.

Takes leave of absence from Douglass College.

September 28–October 24, 1963

Second solo exhibition at Leo Castelli.

October 1963

First of a series of major interviews conducted by John Coplans appears in Artforum.

October 1, 1963

Sells Highland Park home.

Moves with Eisenhauer to the second floor of 36 W. 26th Street, which doubles as a studio.

October 24–November 23, 1963

Pop works are shown for the first time in Britain in The Popular Image at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, organized by Alan Solomon.

November 1963

Swenson publishes "What Is Pop Art? Answers from Eight Painters, Part I: Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol," in Artnews.

Featured speaker for a session entitled "'Sign' Painters" for the eighteenth annual design conference of the American Society of Industrial Designers at the Waldorf Astoria.

November 19–December 15, 1963

Included in Mixed Media and Pop Art at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, organized by Gordon M. Smith, along with Dine, Johns, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist and Warhol, as well as lesser-known artists in the museum’s collection.

Completes first work in acrylic on Plexiglas. Makes several more on plastic, which appeals to interest in achieving an "antiseptical industrial look."⁴⁰Oral history interview with Roy Lichtenstein, November 15, 1963–January 15, 1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Conducted by Richard Baker Brown.]

1964

Makes large canvases of composition notebooks and works that bear close resemblance to Mondrian’s abstractions.

Begins to prime own canvases by white underpaint.

As canvas sizes increase, begins to make Benday dots larger.

Employs an airbrush for the first and only time to create Duridium, which depicts a razor blade.

Begins series of cartoon-style landscapes and seascapes inspired by cartoon backgrounds. Creates first sunrise and sunset works. Increasingly invents own subject matter.

Buys two mannequin heads and paints one like a cartoon girl.

January 31, 1964

Life magazine publishes article entitled "Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?" The idea comes from author Dorothy Seiberling, who at the time was married to Leo Steinberg. Both are supporters of the artist, who approves of the idea for the title.

April 1964

Invited by National Cartoonists Society in New York to talk about work.

His cover design for Art in America features a "pop panorama" drawing of the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair.⁴¹Table of Contents, Art in America 52, no. 2 (April 1964).

April 22, 1964

New York World’s Fair Mural (Girl in Window) is among the murals featured at the New York State Pavilion at the New York State Fair.

Spring 1964

Meets Dorothy Herzka (b. 1939) at Paul Bianchini Gallery in New York (16 E. 78th St.) during preparations for American Supermarket, organized by Ben Birillo.

Jerry Foyster introduces Lichtenstein to the material Rowlux, a polycarbonate sheeting with interesting optical properties, which he soon experiments with in collages.

With help from Birillo, experiments applying enamel motif to porcelain enamel butcher trays featuring an image of a hot dog. Creates first enamel edition, Hot Dog, inspired by commercial enamel signs.

Seeks out ARPOR (Architectural Porcelain Fabricators, Inc.) in Orangeburg, New York, to create enamels featuring cloudscapes, sunrises and scenes of girls based on comic-book panels.

June 1964

Included in Bruce Glaser roundtable radio discussion on New York WBAI that includes Oldenburg and Warhol. The transcript is later published in Artforum.

June 30, 1964

Resigns from Douglass College.

October 6, 1964

Grand opening of American Supermarket, which includes works by a number of artists. Visitors can buy items and put them in shopping bags that feature either Lichtenstein's image of a Thanksgiving turkey or Warhol's Campbell’s tomato soup. The show eventually travels to Rome and Venice.

October 24–November 19, 1964

Temple of Apollo, employing a classical art reference, is shown at Leo Castelli, along with other landscapes.

November 24, 1964

Solo exhibition of landscapes and girls at Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles. 

December 7, 1964

Makes Spear-Bearer costume in which he performs with Eisenhauer and others in Dick Higgins’s opera Hrušalk at the Café au Go Go in New York.

Klüver and Schwarz publish The International Anthology of Contemporary Engravings: The International Avant-Garde: America Discovered, Volume 5 (Galleria Schwarz, Milan).

Rosa Esman begins Tanglewood Press with the portfolio New York Ten, which includes Seascape (1), his first color screenprint on Rowlux.

Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr., Curator of Paintings, Prints, and Drawings, at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, invites him to contribute a screenprint that he makes on clear plastic entitled Sandwich and Soda to the portfolio X + X (Ten Works by Ten Painters). Ugo Mulas photographs him in the studio working on the print. An edition is sent to the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland.

1965

Begins collaboration with Rutgers colleague and potter Hui Ka Kwong to create a series of ceramic heads and another of stacked cups and saucers based on diner cutlery and glassware. Molds for the dishes are purchased from Stewart Clay Company and Holland Mold Company, both in New York. Employs decals of ceramic dots which he has commercially silk-screened which can be cut to the desired configurations. For heads he devises punched-out tape stencils for Hui to spray color through evenly to their contours. Black lines are painted by hand. Uses gold and silver paint in several ceramics featuring teapots.

John Rublowsky’s Pop Art: Images of the American Dream, the first book devoted to the movement, includes Ken Heyman’s photo of the artist unrolling Look Mickey in his studio.

Experiments with Modern motifs in poster of the World’s Fair for the National Cartoonists Society entitled This Must Be the Place.

Dealers Marian Goodman, Ursula Kalish and Sunny Sloane, along with art consultant and framer Barbara Kulicke, establish Multiples, Inc., for editioned pieces of art. They had already opened the Betsy Ross Flag and Banner Company in 1962 with Robert Graham of New York’s Graham Gallery to produce banners by artists. Pistol Banner is the most popular and sells out.

Founded by Daniel Spoerri, Èdition MAT in Paris publishes the artist's boxed Rowlux entitled Seascape (II) in the portfolio Collection 65.

February 1965

Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam purchases As I Opened Fire....

March 13, 1965

Contributes to the Artist’s Key Club, a Happening orchestrated by Arman, where 104 keys to 104 Penn Station lockers are sold at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Each locker has one signed work or one small gift by the participating artists. Contributes four signed drawings, including Kiss V (Study), No Thank You! (Study) and Ocean.

April 1965

Creates three screenprints, Moonscape, Reverie and Sweet Dreams, Baby!, commissioned by Philip Morris, for 11 Pop Artists, Volume 1, II–III.

June 1, 1965

Second solo show at Galerie Sonnabend in Paris. Eisenhauer wears a dress designed by Leigh Rudd made with a silk fabric featuring a sunrise motif by the artist.

Fall 1965

First Brushstrokes painting is inspired by a science fiction comic-strip panel. Invented Brushstroke motifs follow.

October 31, 1965

Attends Idelle Weber’s Halloween party on Livingston Street in Brooklyn Heights dressed as Warhol with Herzka dressed as Edie Sedgwick.

November 20–December 11, 1965

Castelli presents Brushstrokes along with recent ceramic pieces.

December 7–31, 1965

Teardrop Pendant depicting a crying girl is shown at Multiples, Inc.

December 22, 1965

Legally separates from Isabel.

Creates first large-scale enamel wall- and standing-sculptures with perforated metal screens.

1966

Begins Modern Painting series featuring Art Deco imagery.

Creates paintings featuring drips and blots of paint against a graph-paper grid background.

Begins to add surplus Hansen motors to the back of his Rowlux seascapes to simulate the waves of an ocean. Adds specially made light fixtures fabricated by Grand Lighting in Brooklyn to others whose painted bulb casings rotate through a spectrum of color gels to simulate different times of day. Many light fixtures are later removed and discarded because of breakage and the difficulties in running them.

Moves to 190 Bowery at Spring Street. Sets up a residence and studio on the fourth floor of the former German bank built in 1917. The studio is better lit than previous studios, thanks to large windows that look out onto the Bowery. Adolph Gottlieb lives on the second floor, and Malcolm Morley, Louise Nevelson and Mark Rothko live in the neighborhood.

February 1966

Contributes Atom Burst to the project Artists' Tower of Protest, which included a central steel structure designed by Mark di Suvero.

March 6–April 2, 1966

In Caracas, Venezuela, promoting Jacinto Quirarte’s show Pop Art: La Nueva Imagen, sponsored by Tabacalera Nacional/Philip Morris International.

April 16, 1966

Participates in The Current Moment in Art symposium panel with Claes Oldenburg, Ray Parker, Larry Poons, Larry Rivers and Frank Stella, sponsored by the San Francisco Art Institute.

April 27, 1966

Gala opening of Artists for CORE: Fifth Annual Art Exhibition and Sale at Grippi and Waddell, New York, which includes his limited-edition apple core button.

Summer 1966

Designs a limited-edition deluxe print on silver foil along with a larger commercial run of posters, based on 1930s Hollywood motifs, for Lincoln Center’s fourth New York Film Festival.

June 18–October 16, 1966

Represents the United States at the 33rd Venice Biennale with Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly and Jules Olitski, in an exhibition organized by Henry Geldzahler. Travels to Venice for the opening.

October 1966

Six-piece table setting of black-and-white china commissioned by Durable Dish Company is for sale at Leo Castelli.

November 29, 1966–January 3, 1967

The Cleveland Museum of Art presents artist's first solo museum exhibition, Works by Roy Lichtenstein, organized by Ed Henning.

Paul Potash assists at the studio one day a week and learns how to construct the floor-to-ceiling easels. Hires Jerry Simon as assistant.

December 1966

Tate Gallery, London, purchases Whaam!

1967

Mulas’s images of the artist appear in Alan Solomon’s book New York: The New Art Scene.

March 23, 1967

Divorce from Isabel is finalized.

April 1967

“How an Elvis Presley Becomes a Roy Lichtenstein” by Salvador Dalí appears in Arts Magazine.

April 13, 1967

A poster billboard reproducing the painting RLCR 995 is unveiled at the corner of La Cienega Blvd. and Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles, announcing a show at the Pasadena Art Museum.

April 18–May 28, 1967

Pasadena Art Museum, in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, presents first traveling retrospective, organized by Coplans. The first solo exhibition catalogue is published.

April 24, 1967

Interview conducted by David Sylvester in January 1966 airs on BBC Third Programme as "Roy Lichtenstein Talks to David Sylvester," for the series Ten American Artists.

April 28–October 29, 1967

Mural Big Modern Painting for Expo ’67 in American Painting Now at the Expo ’67 US Pavilion in Montreal features graduated Benday dots.

Summer 1967

Rents Rivers’s house in Southampton, New York, with friends.

Works with Hollander Workshop in New York to produce his lithograph Explosion for Portfolio 9.

August 17–20, 1967

While artist-in-residence under the auspices of the Aspen Center for Contemporary Art, along with Allan D’Arcangelo, Les Levine, Robert Morris, Oldenburg and De Wain Valentine, they conceive of a Culture-In series of events that includes a black-and-white taped and painted environment entitled Room in Aspen in the studio space on the second floor of the Brand Building.

Fall 1967

Collaborates with Guild Hall in Paramus, New Jersey, to fabricate Modern sculptures made of brass, mirror, tinted glass, marble, aluminum and wood.

September 1967

Submits Illustration for "Romanze, or The Music Students" (I) and Illustration for "Romanze, or The Music Students" (II) for In Memory of My Feelings: A Selection of Poems by Frank O’Hara, an unbound book (2,500 numbered on colophon page) of two musically derived Modern images drawn on a plastic surface. Edited by Bill Berkson, the works are done in honor of O’Hara, an assistant curator at MoMA who had died tragically.

November 1967

Super Sunset Billboard is installed on Sabol’s handball court in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Covering six plywood panels and painted by hand, it is later destroyed.

November 4–December 17, 1967

Stedelijk Museum presents first European retrospective. The show travels to three other museums, including Tate Gallery in 1968. It is the Tate’s first show dedicated to a living American artist.

Recognized as a Regents Professor, University of California, Irvine.

Begins first Stretcher Frame paintings.

1968

January 1968

Hires Carlene Meeker as assistant. Her first task is to scrape off the dots incorrectly applied by one of his former assistants and repaint them; she stays on for twelve years. Often works on fifteen to twenty paintings at a time.

January 4, 1968

Arrives in London for opening of Tate retrospective. Travels to Morocco with family after opening festivities.

Makes first Modular painting featuring repeated design imagery, inspired by an art project completed in third or fourth grade.

Spring 1968

Commissioned to create an editioned sculpture to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of both the US Postal Service and International Airmail Service, Salute to Airmail.

May 24, 1968

Commissioned image of Robert F. Kennedy appears on cover of Time magazine.

June 1968

Invited by Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) curator Maurice Tuchman to participate in forthcoming Art and Technology exhibition. Is paired with Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

June 21, 1968

Time magazine features his rendering of a gun for its cover story, "The Gun in America."

Summer 1968

Visits the Pasadena Art Museum with Coplans and sees Constructivist paintings of heads by German Expressionist artist Alexei Jawlensky. Coplans discusses his ideas for an exhibition on serial paintings.

Begins paintings on the theme of Claude Monet’s Haystacks. Continues making works featuring Art Deco and stretcher bar imagery.

Purchases a shared house on Wooley Street in Southampton with friends.

August 1968

Paper boat Hat is included in S.M.S., no. 4, a portfolio of artists’ works edited by William Copley and Dimitri Petrov.

September 1968

Joins artists’ boycott of Chicago museums over the police action during the Democratic National Convention.

September 10, 1968

Appointed Fellow for Life at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

September 12, 1968

Tours Universal Studios.

September 17–October 27, 1968

Sees Coplans’s exhibition Serial Imagery at the Pasadena Art Museum.

Begins series of Rouen Cathedrals.

October 1968

Submits a collage for Modern Painting for New York State Mural (Town and Country), an unrealized mural for the Legislative Office Building in Albany, N.Y., commissioned by the Empire State Plaza Art Commission.

October 22–November 23, 1968

Charles E. Slatkin Galleries debuts wool tapestry featuring a Modern version of a classical Greek head.

October 23, 1968

Invited by prominent Chicago dealer Richard Feigen to contribute a work to monthlong protest exhibition Richard J. Daley.

November 1, 1968

Marries Dorothy Herzka.

November 1968

Commissioned to make movie poster for Joanna; it is reproduced in black-and-white newspaper ads but never distributed as a poster.

Designs wrapping paper sold at On 1st. Paper Plate is also sold at On 1st the following year.

Richard Kalina begins as studio assistant.

December 1968

Richard Dimmler begins as studio assistant.

1969

Winter/Spring 1969

Begins to use red oilboard perforated sheets he orders from Beckley Perforating Co., which are easier to manipulate than metal screens.

Directs painstaking dotting process for Haystack and Rouen Cathedral canvases. Assistants meticulously cut and apply dot stencils to canvas, then apply coats of paint with brayer, sometimes removing and reapplying dots in a different color.

January–July, 1969

Issues first serial prints (seven Haystack and six Rouen Cathedral lithographs) through Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, collaborating with master printer Kenneth Tyler.

Kalina leaves.

February 3, 1969

Returns to Los Angeles for a two-week stay at Universal Studios. Sketches ideas for film loops for Three Landscapes.

Photographed by Lord Snowdon in his Bowery studio with Pyramid paintings and several Modern works; photographs appear in Vogue magazine in September.

Summer 1969

Stays on Wooley Street in Southampton again with friends. With the assistance of filmmaker Joel L. Freedman of Cinnamon Productions Inc., works on footage that will eventually become Three Landscapes. With Freedman, seeks out special-effects expert Hugo Casolaro, who collaborates on animating both the color and imagery of the final work.

Fall 1969

Begins to use his own photographs as source material, including snapshots of magnified mirrors and their reflections.

Creates first Mirror paintings, inspired by the airbrushed quality of mirror sales catalogues.

September 23, 1969

Buys carriage house in Southampton but doesn't move in until 1970.

September 19–November 9, 1969

First New York retrospective of paintings and sculptures, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, organized by Diane Waldman. The show travels to four other US museums.

1970

March 15–September, 1970

Two loops of the Three Landscapes film are shown at the Expo ’70 US Pavilion in Osaka, Japan. The artist does not travel to Japan to see the installation.

Summer 1970

Moves into Southampton house with plans for a studio on the third floor, but ceilings turn out to be substantially lower than expected.

Creates Modern Head, first brass relief, in an edition of 100 for sale by Gemini G.E.L.

October 1970

Completes large Brushstrokes mural—12 by 245 feet on four continuous walls—at the University of Düsseldorf.

Bianchini publishes the first monograph cataloguing most of his drawings and prints.

1971

Begins Entablature series in black and white using own photographs of neoclassical motif's on New York City buildings as sources, which are inspired by the background decorative dividers in works by Cubist painters such as Picasso and Georges Braque.

March 13–April 8, 1971

Mirrors exhibited publicly for the first time at Leo Castelli.

May 10–August 29, 1971

Three Landscapes is shown in Art and Technology at LACMA. Once again, the artist does not see the final installation.

May 12, 1971

Inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston).

September 1971

Castelli opens a new gallery at 420 W. Broadway in SoHo.

Designs a poster for UNICEF child-welfare programs, Save Our Planet Save Our Water, to raise ecological awareness.

Lithograph Mao accompanies Frederic Tuten’s The Adventures of Mao on the Long March.

Designs his studio in Southampton across the lawn from the house as a classic saltbox, with skylights. Replicates easel walls of wooden racks and clamps.

Harry N. Abrams publishes first monograph of his paintings and sculpture, written by Waldman. Italian and German editions are also published that same year.

1972

John Coplans edits monograph on the artist in Documentary Monographs in Modern Art series.

Begins painting Still Lifes, which will continue as a motif throughout his career. References to Matisse appear in works. Starts to quote own work in these paintings.

Increasingly uses diagonals in place of dots.

October 1972

Serves as visual consultant to Frank Perry’s film Play It as It Lays, based on a novel by Joan Didion.

James dePasquale begins as studio assistant in Southampton; Dimmler leaves.

1973

Begins series of trompe l’oeil and Cubist still lifes, which include his take on their use of faux-bois.

References the work of Morris Louis.

Fall 1973

Begins Artist’s Studio works, incorporating quotations of his early 1960s work. Later paintings include references to abstract-style paintings, precursors to a group of Perfect/Imperfect works.

Creates paintings showing the influence of De Stijl and Russian Constructivism. Picasso’s Bulls become a particular theme in graphic work.

1974

Around this time, Carlos Ramos begins as studio assistant.

Paints first works influenced by Italian Futurism.

Begins new series of Entablatures using metallic and pastel colors. Mixes sand with paint to highlight surface texture.

October 7, 1974

Modern Head, the first large-scale sculpture in metal, wood and polyurethane, is assembled on site at Fashion Park, Santa Anita Shopping Center, Arcadia, California.

1975

January 10–February 17, 1975

Centre Beaubourg in Paris organizes first traveling retrospective of drawings.

Begins series of paintings based on works by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant.

1976

Completes final series of Entablature paintings.

Paints Office Still Lifes based on newspaper illustrations of office items.

Creates several self-portraits in Futurist style.

Warhol creates a screenprint portrait of him.

Makes first painted sculptures in bronze of mirrors, coffee cups and drinking glasses. Works with fabricators who use the lost wax casting process. Bronze is patinated black then painted in the studio.

Produces bicentennial poster for the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.

1977

Begins series of paintings based on works by Surrealist artists (including Dalí, Max Ernst and Miró) and Surrealist works by Picasso, some featuring a cropped speech balloon.

Olivia Motch starts as administrative assistant.

March 1977

Commissioned by BMW to create a design for their 320i race car, driven later in the year at Le Mans.

April 26, 1977

Receives Skowhegan Medal for Painting and Sculpture.

May 13, 1977

Is awarded doctorate in fine arts from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

1978

January 12, 1978

Creates Airplane, 1977, for American poet Kenneth Koch’s novel-turned-play The Red Robins. Production also included the use of the authorized replica, Airplane (Replica).

North American Indian motifs reappear.

May 1978

First large-scale outdoor sculpture, Lamp is commissioned by Gilman Paper Company, St. Mary’s, Georgia.

July 19–September 24, 1978

Contributes book cover design for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition Art about Art, organized by Jean Lipman and Richard Marshall.

Visits Los Angeles. Sees the Robert Gore Rifkind collection of German Expressionist graphic art.

November 12–26, 1978

Invited by Anand Sarabhai to visit his home in Ahmedabad, India, designed by Le Corbusier for Anand’s mother, Manorama Sarabhai. Makes textile works and paints Mirrors reliefs in sandstone. Prepares teakwood blocks for Goldfish Bowl, Lamp and Picture and Pitcher but is unable to print them because blocks are warped. Prints them in 1981 after Tyler Graphics fixes them.

1979

Makes last Surrealist-inspired works.

Begins German Expressionist–inspired works based on paintings and woodcuts.

March 1979

Outdoor public sculpture commission, Mermaid, is installed. The 24-foot-high painted steel work fabricated by Tallix is poised on three concrete waves in a fountain pool. A live palm tree planted near the head of the sculpture completes the ensemble.

May 1979

Awarded honorary doctorate in fine arts from Southampton College in New York.

May 23, 1979

Elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (elevated in 1993 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New York).

July 11, 1979

London premiere of BBC profile re-creates Bowery studio, and films him at work in the Southampton studio.

October 25, 1979

Designs Untitled Shirt using mirror motif in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia, for Artist Space’s sixth-anniversary fundraising party at the Mudd Club.

1980

Makes numerous Expressionist Heads in sculpture and on canvas, along with Expressionist-inspired Nudes in Landscape paintings.

Returns to Still Lifes, exploring apples and other fruits with cartoon-style brushstrokes.

Creates an American Flag canvas DEST (RL 0845), which he later destroys.

July 1980

Sketches some designs for a tea set commissioned by Rosenthal GmbH, Selb, Germany; the edition is completed in late 1984.

September 25, 1980

Isabel Lichtenstein (1921–80) dies.

1981

May 8–June 28, 1981

Exhibition of paintings and sculptures from the period 1970–80 at Saint Louis Art Museum, organized by Jack Cowart; the show travels to museums in the United States, Europe and Japan.

October 4–November 25, 1981

Whitney Museum’s downtown branch on Wall Street showcases graphic work from the 1970s.

October 17–November 7, 1981

Leo Castelli presents new works, featuring renditions of apples on canvas.

Creates Woman paintings based on Willem de Kooning's Woman series from the late 1950s.

Makes several drawings on acetate, including ones inspired by Willem de Kooning’s Woman series from the late 1950s. Projects the acetate sketches onto canvas for the paintings. Before Magna is applied, uses collaged cutouts of painted brushstrokes to determine the final composition and palette.

Other subjects at this time include sailboats and forest scenes.

1982

Begins painting series, Two Paintings, in which he combines two framed motifs, often referencing his previous works. References to Johns’s flagstones appear.

January–February, 1982

Travels to Egypt.

April 1, 1982

Participates in roundtable discussion for exhibition Roy Lichtenstein at Colorado State University.

June 1982

Submits three-dimensional maquette for tallest sculpture to date, Brushstrokes in Flight, to a national competition sponsored by the City of Columbus for an international airport.

Sets up studio at 105 E. 29th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue, next to the Hotel Deauville, on the seventh floor.

August 8–September 19, 1982

Look Mickey, Popeye and Wimpy (Tweet) are exhibited for the first time at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.

1983

Winter 1983

Petersburg Press publishes Seven Apples, a series of seven-color woodcuts.

March 21, 1983

Poster for UN Special Committee Against Apartheid is published by Galerie Maeght-Lelong in Paris.

October 4–December 4, 1983

Contributes design to Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival.

Publication of monograph by Alloway, which includes the essay, "Notes on Technique."

November 1983

On the wall of Castelli’s Greene Street gallery, begins 96-foot-long mural, featuring a compilation of many motifs including some from earlier works. The painted and collaged mural is only meant to exist from the time the show opens to the public on December 3 until January 14, 1984, after which it is covered over with sheet rock. The mural is fully destroyed when Castelli closes the gallery space in the fall of 1988.

Robert McKeever works on Greene Street Mural and eventually becomes part-time studio assistant in New York.

Robert McKeever works on Greene Street Mural and eventually becomes studio assistant in New York.

December 1983

Designs logo for the Visual Arts Center at OSU.

1984

Returns to New York part-time to live and work on E. 29th Street. The east wall has a Formica surface that he can draw on or tape things to, and it has windows along the north and south. Big paintings are difficult to fit in the elevator. Paints an image of Swiss cheese on elevator doors.

Spring 1984

Joins board of directors of the Studio in a School Association, a not-for-profit organization that brings art experiences and artists to New York City public elementary schools.

Commissioned to create a mural for the lobby of the Equitable Tower in midtown Manhattan. In December, the artist submits a study for Mural with Blue Brushstroke.

Fabrication begins for the large-scale sculpture Brushstrokes in Flight, commissioned to be installed at the Columbus airport.

September 1984

Commissioned to create a large-scale outdoor sculpture for the Walker Art Center.

September 20–December 2, 1984

Whitney Museum presents Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism, and Performance, organized by Barbara Haskell.

1985

Explores the motif of the American flag with dots and diagonals called Forms in Space.

May 31, 1985

Contributes a new print of the American flag for the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania fundraising event called Rally 'Round the Flag.

November 26, 1985

Media event held celebrating the start of installation for Mural with Blue Brushstroke.

Designs a logo for the Hampton Jitney Company for their “Riding the Wave” campaign, launched in late 1985 on a fleet of Setra Intercontinental buses.

Works on a group of abstract paintings titled Perfect Painting.

1986

January 1986

Mural with Blue Brushstroke completed. References to Léger, Matisse, Stella, Johns, Entablatures and early Pop imagery feature prominently in the final design.

February 15, 1986

Salute to Painting, made from painted and fabricated aluminum and standing over 25 feet high, is dedicated at the Walker Art Center.

Spring 1986

Makes Imperfect paintings, featuring compositions of generic geometric abstractions that feature a single line that bounces from one edge of the canvas to the other, sometimes breaking the boundary of the canvas.

Approached by Taittinger to design a label for a champagne bottle. The bottles are introduced on October 16, 1990, in Paris. 

Tyler Graphics Ltd. publishes a series of hand-painted Brushstroke wall relief sculptures in cherry wood.

December 12, 1986

Begins work for the first time with Donald Saff, founder of Graphicstudio, located at the University of South Florida in Tampa, to publish two versions of his Brushstroke Chair and Brushstroke Ottoman, one in white birch veneer crafted by Beeken / Parsons in Shelburne, Vermont, and another in bronze from the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington state.

1987

February 1987

Begins work at Gemini on Imperfect prints in which edges extend over the conventional print border. The prints are published the following year, each in an edition of 45.

February 2–March 5, 1987

Works with Graphicstudio to produce a series of waxtype prints featuring Brushstroke Faces that utilize beeswax instead of printer’s ink to create an encaustic finish.

March 15–June 2, 1987

MoMA mounts a major drawings retrospective, organized by Bernice Rose, the first show of drawings by a living artist ever presented by the museum. The show travels to museums in the United States, UK, Europe and Israel.

July 1987

Peter Littmann, Executive Director of Vorwerk & Co. Teppichwerke in Hameln, Germany, visits the artist to commission a design for a wall-to-wall unlimited edition carpet using no more than six colors and measuring four meters in width. Other artists commissioned include Sol LeWitt, Arata Isozaki, David Hockney, Jean Nouvel, Sam Francis, Zaha Hadid, Mimmo Paladino, Michael Graves and Richard Meier. Designs are submitted the following March.

Summer 1987

Designs the exterior of a mirrored glass labyrinth funhouse for André Heller’s traveling amusement park Luna Luna in Hamburg, with piped-in music by Philip Glass.

November 1987

Visits Israel for the first time for opening of drawings show at the Tel Aviv Museum. Discusses the possibility of a permanent mural for the museum with director Marc Scheps.

Creates diptychs Painting with Detail (Blue) and Painting with Detail (Black), in which a full field of blue and black Benday dots, respectively, appear alongside a much smaller counterpart.

A committee for the Lichtenstein Museum is inaugurated in St. Louis in the hope of renovating mansions in Oak Knoll Park in Clayton, Missouri, as a research and study center along with galleries that would feature changing exhibitions of varying themes related to the artist and his time. The project is never developed.

1988

Begins Reflections series, incorporating quotations of both previously depicted and new comic strips, returning to the use of comic source materials. Comes upon the idea while trying to photograph a Rauschenberg print under glass.

Creates sculptures of heads in patinated bronze on the themes of the archaic and the surreal and referencing works by Constantin Brancusi.

Returns to the idea of drawings in black and white.

First German-language monograph, devoted to pre-Pop works, by Ernst A. Busche is published.

Begins Plus and Minus series based on works by Mondrian.

Sketches curtain design for André Heller’s staging of Body and Soul (1988). His curtain is used as the backdrop for the tour in the United States and Europe.

Sketchbook contains first drawing of a Virtual motif.

Commissioned to design a poster for the California campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

Spring 1988

Patricia Koch replaces Motch as administrative assistant.

April 1988

Coups de pinceau, a 31-foot-high aluminum Brushstroke sculpture, is installed at Caisse des Dépôts in Paris.

May 1988

Sets up a studio and residence in a 1912 building at 745 Washington Street. A former steel fabricating business, it is renovated by architect David Piscuskas of the firm 1100 Architect. Constructs his wooden easel walls around the perimeter. Divides time between Southampton and Manhattan.

June 1988

Receives honorary doctorate in humanities from OSU.

November 16, 1988–May 31, 1989

Brushstroke Group, a 30-foot-high painted aluminum sculpture, is installed in Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Manhattan as part of the Public Art Fund’s project to install temporary sculptures on public sites in New York.

Designs second shopping bag, produced by Dayton Hudson Department Store Company, to celebrate the inauguration of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in cooperation with the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The bag features Brushstrokes on a weave pattern background, known from his Plus and Minus imagery.

1989

March 15–May 15, 1989

Artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome. Sees highway sign advertising furniture, which spurs him to look through the Rome yellow pages and collect similar imagery. Begins thinking about doing a series of Interiors based on findings.

April–May, 1989

Travels with studio assistants to Tel Aviv to work on a large mural for the entrance hall of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Summer 1989

Begins work on Bauhaus Stairway Mural for a building designed by I. M. Pei for Creative Artists Agency in Beverly Hills and commissioned by collector and agency founder Michael Ovitz.

June 1989

Commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York (MTA) to create Times Square Mural at the subway station at 42nd Street and Times Square. After years of delay, the work is installed posthumously in 2002 by Polich ArtWorks for the MTA Arts for Transit program. The sixteen enamel panels feature science fiction themes in futuristic style including an image of Buck Rogers.

October 1989

Begins joint project with Philip Glass on a hand-cast bronze, copper and wood music box, Modern Love Waltz.

Continues to create Reflections which feature numerous untitled abstractions as well more figurative ones with Wonder Woman, Dagwood, Donald Duck and Nancy—in homage to Warhol’s early painting of the comic heroine. Tyler Graphics begins work on prints in the series, which are published the following year.

Time magazine reissues his image of Bobby Kennedy and The Gun in America as prints, each done only in an edition of 2 and given to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., where they join the original drawings and production materials.

First colored pencil drawing for his series of Interiors of homes.

Fall 1989

Discussions with Gemini about creating a print series of Interiors. One work features a portrait of Mao that references both his early work and Warhol’s. Another features Dagwood Bumstead.

First Mobile in painted and patinated bronze fabricated by Tallix. Four others are produced the following years, and another bronze Landscape Mobile is produced in 1991.

1990

Winter 1990

Continues exploring Interiors. Many show paintings hanging on a wall that the artist wanted to try out but not paint as full-fledged works. Paints for the first time with sponges.

January 1990

Commissioned by composer Steve Reich to create a cover design for recording called The Four Sections. The cover and accompanying promotional poster are published by Elektra Entertainment, New York, the following year.

Sherrie Levine appropriates several of his comic-strip paintings and prints in her 1990 mixed-media work Collage/Cartoon.

Summer 1990

Laurie Lambrecht works as administrative assistant part time, replacing Koch.

June 1990

Works again with Saff at his new shop Saff Tech in Oxford, Maryland, to create a bas-relief, Suspended Mobile, and Water Lily prints based on Monet’s late Water Lilies. Creates six Water Lilies with screenprinted enamel that feature a swirling design on metal developed by Saff. Designs individual wood frames for several of them.

September 1990

Cassandra Lozano joins the New York studio full time, and Lambrecht begins to work in the summers only, until 1992.

October 7, 1990–January 15, 1991

Some comic-book sources are researched and shown for the first time in MoMA’s High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture, an exhibition of twentieth-century art that includes source materials and related ephemera.

Designs headdress and stage backdrop for André Heller’s unrealized TV production of Aida, which was to star soprano Jessye Norman. The headdress and costume is later made for Heller’s opera Sein und Schein and worn by Maria Bill. The opera debuts in Salzburg, Vienna, at the Burgtheater on January 19, 1993. Also participating in the opera project are Mimmo Paladino, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol.

Tallix produces two Mobiles in painted and patinated bronze as well as Airplane, an outdoor sculpture in bronze.

Artes Magnus in New York publishes a porcelain-and-cast-resin Landscape Mobile produced by Bernardaud in Limoges, France.

Produces the print Mirror with Gemini for the benefit of the Harvey Gantt for Senate Campaign.

1991

April 2–June 30, 1991

Two Interior paintings are included in Whitney Museum’s Biennial.

April 25, 1991

Receives Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Award.

May 15–September 28, 1992

Ed. 1/2 of Modern Head, based on the 1974 wood sculpture RLCR 2318, is installed in Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan. 

October 1991

Creates a sculpture based on the image of an African mask in Interior with African Mask. It is fabricated at Tallix in versions of galvanized steel, tin-plated bronze, zinc-plated bronze and pewter.

Creates ten collage studies for screen prints to be illustrated in Nouvelle Chute de l’Amérique, a limited-edition unbound book published in 1992 by Les Éditions du Solstice to accompany eleven Allen Ginsberg poems under the title The Fall of America. Etchings and aquatints are pulled on a handpress at Atelier Dupont in Visat, Paris. Each edition is signed and numbered by both.

1992

Bocour stops producing Magna acrylic paint. Lichtenstein purchases remaining stock and reaches out to Mark Golden at Golden Artist Colors, Inc., to order custom Mineral Spirit Acrylics (MSA) similar in color and working properties to Magna. 

June 1992

Approached by dealer Ronald Feldman to help fund-raise on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic senatorial campaigns. Creates a print of the Oval Office to benefit ten female senatorial candidates. A poster is also created.

June 12, 1992

Made Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Republic.

July 1992

Commissioned to create a sculpture for the city of Barcelona, Spain, on the occasion of the summer Olympics. Inspired by the work of Catalan artist Antoni Gaudí, creates Barcelona Head, a 64-foot-high sculpture covered with colored ceramic tiles.

Creates an interior inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s bedroom paintings.

December 6, 1992–March 7, 1993

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, presents Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955–62, organized by Paul Schimmel and Donna DeSalvo, devoted exclusively to the early years of the Pop art movement in the United States. Pre-1960s works such as Washington Crossing the Delaware I, and several semiabstract drawings of cartoon characters from 1958 are included. The show travels to two other US museums.

His print Rain Forest, initiated by Artists United for Nature, is included in the portfolio Columbus: In Search of a New Tomorrow to raise awareness and funds to protect the world’s tropical rainforests. It features his sponging technique.

1993

January 1993

Painting Oval Office is finished.

April 1993

Begins work with Saff Tech on painted nickel-plated bronze Metallic Brushstroke Head.

May 1993

Produces cover and frontispiece for Tuten’s book, Tintin in the New World: A Romance (William Morrow), which features Tintin, a character created by Belgian artist Hergé.

July 9, 1993

Receives honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London.

July–August, 1993

Creates Large Interior with Three Reflections, a mural consisting of a 30-foot-long panel and three additional panels.

October 1993

Completes Brushstroke Nude, a 12-foot-high painted aluminum sculpture fabricated at Tallix.

October 7, 1993–January 16, 1994

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, a retrospective survey of paintings and sculpture. Designs cover for museum’s magazine. The exhibition travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museé des beaux-arts, Montreal; pre-Pop works are added to the venues at the Haus der Kunst, Munich; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. The tour concludes with a smaller exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio.

October 23–November 27, 1993

Premiers Tintin painting at Leo Castelli.

December 23, 1993

Receives Amici de Barcelona award from the Mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall.

1994

January 1994

Roy Lichtenstein: The Artist at Work (Lodestar) by Lou Ann Walker is published. Designed to teach children eight to twelve years old about art, it includes photos by Michael Abramson of the artist at work in his studio.

February 1994

Meets with Tyler at his shop to begin work on Nude prints.

August 1994

Designs the hull and sail for a PACT 95 yacht, featuring an image of a mermaid on the hull and sun, clouds and water on the spinnaker.

Using machined aluminum, paint and wax, Saff Tech starts fabrication of his relief Woman Contemplating a Yellow Cup. That October they begin production on Imperfect Sculpture using stained cast iron and painted stainless steel plates.

Fall 1994

Paints works featuring comic-book females in the nude inspired by Picasso’s 1928 beach series.

October 1994

The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné by Mary Lee Corlett is published. The book appears in conjunction with the prints retrospective at the National Gallery of Art. The show later travels to LACMA, Dallas Museum of Art, and Parrish Art Museum.

November 19–December 17, 1994

First series of Nudes is shown at Leo Castelli.

1995

January 1995–March 1996

Works with Gemini on prints showcasing a variety of images including venetian blinds, musical scales and Chinese Style Landscapes.

The Walt Disney Company publishes Virtual Interior: Portrait of a Duck to benefit several children’s charities. It is his first collaboration with the printing house Noblet Serigraphie, Inc., New York.

Continues to create Interiors, beginning a group of Virtual Interiors, which feature colored, instead of black-only, outlining.

March 31, 1995

New York Times publishes "Disciple of Color and Line, Master of Irony," an interview conducted by chief staff art critic Michael Kimmelman on the artist’s favorite pieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

June 8, 1995

Donates Composition III, based on the motif of musical notes, to the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies; 175 copies of the print hang in US embassies.

October 1995

Selected by Capuchin monks to create a mural for Chapel of the Eucharist in the Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church in San Giovanni Rotondo, Apulia, Italy. The church is designed by Renzo Piano, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper,  Lichtenstein sends Piano a drawing, but the mural is never executed due to Piano's unexpected death.

October 5, 1995

Receives the National Medal of Arts at a gala ceremony in Washington, D.C., presented by President Clinton.

November 1995

Brushstroke Still Life with Lamp print on honey-comb core aluminum is started at Saff Tech. It, along with three others, features hand-painted brushstrokes; only one of the four prints is completed by the artist before his death.

November 10, 1995

Receives Kyoto Prize from Inamori Foundation, Kyoto, Japan. Travels to Kyoto to accept the award and deliver a lecture on his work.

Inspired by monotype and pastel landscapes of Edgar Degas at the Met in 1994, begins a large series of Song Dynasty–inspired mountain views, which have been referred to as Landscapes in the Chinese Style. Benday dots in graduated sizes simulate atmospheric effects.

Creates self-portrait, entitled Coup de Chapeau (Self-Portrait).

1996

May 1996

Creates a model for a hologram of a domestic interior commissioned by the C-Project based in Miami Beach. Unhappy with the results, abandons the idea.

Begins work on maquettes of sculptures of a Pyramid and several Houses that rely on inverted angles to create the illusion of three-dimensionality.

May 19, 1996

Awarded honorary doctorate in fine arts from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

August 1996

Designs logo for DreamWorks Records, a subsidiary of the film company DreamWorks SKG, founded by David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

September 28–October 26, 1996

Roy Lichtenstein: Landscapes in the Chinese Style is presented at Leo Castelli.

December 1996

Donates 154 of his prints and two books spanning his career to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., making it the largest repository of his prints.

Fabrication of large-scale six-piece outdoor sculpture, Singapore Brushstrokes and Landscape, completed. Commissioned by the Pontiac Land Group, Singapore, it was installed at Millenia, a downtown development, in Summer 1997.

Approached by NARAL to design a pro-choice button. The button did not go into production.

1997

Continues to explore Interiors that include motifs from his earlier works, featuring still lifes and female figures.

Works on a number of prints, including one for Leo Castelli’s 90th Birthday Portfolio along with Cubist Cello, which features references to Marc Chagall, in support of the Roy Lichtenstein Study Center for Contemporary Art at the Tel Aviv Museum.

Sketches drawings after Cézanne’s Bathers.

April 9, 1997

Dedication of the Roy Lichtenstein Study Center for Contemporary Art by the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel.

April 30, 1997

Interviewed by David Sylvester. The interview is one of the last given by the artist.

June 1997

Travels to the Saff and Company workshop to add the hand-painted strokes to Brushstroke Still Life with Lamp. This is the only one of the prints that is completed by the artist before his death.

June 15–November 9, 1997

The 47th Venice Biennale opens. House II, a large-scale fiberglass sculpture of a house exterior, is shown at the Italian Pavilion in the exhibition Future, Present, and Past, curated by Biennale Artistic Director Germano Celant.

September 5–October 7, 1997

Galerie Lawrence Rubin in Zurich presents an exhibition of new Interior paintings. Sylvester’s interview is published in the catalogue.

September 29, 1997

Dies unexpectedly at New York University Medical Center in Manhattan from complications due to pneumonia.

_{Text by Clare Bell and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation}