Roy Lichtenstein

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One of America’s leading Pop artists, Roy Lichtenstein was a master of stereotype, adept at using irony to analyze visual conventions. His name is often linked to whimsical interpretations of comic strips and advertisements, characterized by bold colors, black outlines, and Ben Day dot patterns. However, Lichtenstein also had a profound appreciation for American Indian culture, which is explored in detail in this book through a virtually unknown collection of his paintings and works on paper influenced by Native American subjects. His early cubist abstractions from the 1950s reflect a fascination with European modernism and artists like Picasso, Miró, and Klee. The Native American themes in these works indicate his interest in 19th-century artists such as George Catlin and Karl Bodmer. Lichtenstein described these paintings as reinterpretations of Western art focused on cowboys, Indians, and treaty signings, influenced by modern European painting. These themes reemerge in his 1979 “Amerindian” paintings and related works, inspired by his collection of Native American design motifs and his attendance at powwows at the Shinnecock Indian reservation. For Lichtenstein, Native American art served as a historical foundation for American art, paralleling the relationship between African art and early European modernism. This catalogue, featuring forty color illustrations, is the first to delve into these significant influences.