Roy Lichtenstein - Way to fame and records on the art market

With Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein one of the artists whose works everyone recognizes, (almost) everywhere in the world. He has been producing his catchy art since the 1960s, and at that time he quickly became one of the leading figures in modern art.

And of course also one of the central protagonists of pop art , his work is considered the art, which has defined the basic requirements of pop art better than the work of any other artist parodistically.

Lichtenstein himself described the pop art as "not 'American' painting, but actually industrial painting ", a look at the artist's career and rise, however, shows that the price of its works of art develops in a way that does not remind itself of industrial mass production, but rather of plant construction in the large industry.

Lichtenstein's comfortable start to the art world

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born in 1923 in New York City as a child of the upscale Jewish middle class, with a real estate agent as a father and a mother in classic housewife role. It grows up in the "Upper West Side", the exclusive part of Manhattan, who lies between Central Park and the banks of the Hudson River, and visits the private Franklin School for Boys after the elementary school years at the public school.

Lichtenstein had drawn early as a child because this hobby at Franklin was not conveyed schoolically, he wrote down at the Parsons School of Design to paint watercolors on Saturdays.

The young Lichtenstein was also interested in anthropology and natural sciences, he spent a lot of time near the parent's apartment in the American Museum of Natural History.

It is also known that Lichtenstein, as a teenager, listened with passion with the highly trendy radio plays. Above all, he is said to have selected the radio plays, the stories of which were sometimes dark (anti) heroes that were also known from comics, such as "The Shadow" , "Flash Gordon" or "Buck Rogers" .

This fun was later interpreted: the young Roy unconsciously recorded heroic and mystical clichés here. The versatile teenager then often visited jazz concerts in the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he died with dedication.

In the last high school year Lichtenstein from the Parsons School of Design found its former mother organization, the Art Students League of New York , where he wrote to the summer class.

Here he worked under the care of Reginald Marsh , an artist of American regionalism , in which, in addition to a realistic representation of rural life, a understanding of the development of new technologies and thus also an understanding of new art was given little space.

The "realistic regionalists" knew Lichtenstein from his high school time, they were highly valued in the United States in the 1930s. During this time of great depression, the healing pictures of American country life fulfilled compensatory purposes similar to our home films after World War II.

Lichtenstein was probably enthusiastic to draw under a celebrity that he had already read in his very first art book, "Thomas Craven's Modern Art" from 1934.

Even though Marsh depicted a social realism that did not exhaust himself in beautiful landscapes, his student was soon disappointed with Marsh's demand for realistic art exercise, which considered the rapid development of technology neglected as well as the development of its own artistic style.

Perhaps Lichtenstein had also taken a completely different suggestion from regionalism, in any case he decided to explore more of his country after the high school, and decided to study at Ohio State University (from 1940).

After tradition, a real stroke of luck for the prospective artist, even if at the request of his parents, the teaching qualification first sought: he learned from artist and professor Hoyt L. Sherman , who was to significantly expand his artistic horizon.

Sherman, a supporter and master of modern art , made Lichtenstein known with the most important influencers of art at the time: Cézanne and van Gogh , Mondrian and Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso and many more. Especially with his encouragement, looking for his own approach, and his concept of the perception unit should have lifelong influence on Lichtenstein.

Lichtenstein now started to deal a little more thoroughly with the history of art, one could also say that he wanted to know everything about art since the first cave images. In the Lichtenstein Foundation, a copy of Elizabeth Gardner's "Art Through the Ages" (1936), with Lichtenstein's address in Columbus (capital of Ohio and the seat of the university), is a memory of this time.

Lichtenstein's artistic ego finding is suddenly interrupted

In 1943 the Second World War up Lichtenstein, serving in the Army until 1945, which started in Europe. Lichtenstein took courses for history and French after the war and tried to visit his model Picasso - which he did not succeed because he was called back home after just six weeks: his father was dying.

Lichtenstein graduated in the summer of 1946 and began the Master of Fine Arts course , which he ended in 1950. At the same time, he was offered an artistic teaching , which he regularly performed until 1951 and afterwards.

In between he had married Isabell Wilson, with whom he moved to Cleveland because he had found a job there. In contrast to Lichtenstein, he accepted all kinds of jobs, as a draftsman and as a can designer, was able to exhibit alone for the first time in Cleveland and even had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1951, but the enthusiasm for his half-hearted images initially failed to materialize.

Lichtenstein now traveled back and forth between Cleveland and New York, worked as a designer and as a shop window decorator, got the first son in 1954 and painted a little in between.

Not much happened artistically during this time: Lichtenstein still fluctuated between Expressionism and Cubism and self -determined abstraction , he alienated some typical American pictures and painted wooden constructions, tried out in sculptures made of wood and metal and also stood out in New York three times until 1955, only anything was sold.

These were not good prerequisites to contribute to the livelihood of a family of four, he took up his teaching in 1957, in 1958 he was offered a job at New State University in Oswego as an assistant professor for art, where he taught the next few years.

Finally! - Lichtenstein's rise to fame

In 1960 Lichtenstein changed to Rutgers University in the state of New Jersey. Here he gets to Allan Kaprow , the inventor of the "Happenings" , and important contemporary artists such as Robert Watts, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg , Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns , i.e. the pioneers of pop art in concentration.

All of these encounters with their influences are said to have triggered a kind of initial spark in Lichtenstein, in 1961 he painted his first pop art pictures, first he experimented with chewing gum pictures, then he brought them out in large format, then broke with all the traditions of his previous art pollution, built the comic interpreting bubble into his pictures and enthusiastically used industrial printing techniques.

His first large-format work, in which he uses hard-edged characters and Ben-Day dots (special scanning points whose printing technology Ben Day invented), was the "Look Mickey" from 1961, which today hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

This picture was taken as one of his sons with his finger in the middle of a Micky Mouse book and said:

I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, dad? " ("I bet you can't paint so well, or, daddy?").

In the same year, Lichtenstein produced six other works of art, on which well-known characters of chewing gum packaging and cartoons were shown, he had found his style.

The following year he also found someone in Leo Castelli who guaranteed him his rent through permanent payments when Lichtenstein worked exclusively for his gallery, a support for Castelli, which he gave promising artists.

Castelli had already exhibited Lichtenstein beforehand, but did not find himself ready for such a kind of scholarship. That changed suddenly, because Lichtenstein's newly invented art arrived so much that the individual exhibition from 1962 in the Castelli Gallery was sold out before it opened.

How Lichtenstein really gets the international art market on the fore

What follows now is an excursus in relation to the artist Lichtenstein, the representative of Lichtenstein by well -known gallery owners and the increasing sales prices of his pictures are a very interesting little history of the New York gallery company and at the same time a report about how this gallery operations loses art auction trade

As already mentioned, Lichtenstein was able to exhibit in New York for the first time in 1951, in which Julius Carlebach Gallery , he was already lucky at that time to bring the interest of the progressive artificer Leo Castelli, who also exhibited Lichtenstein's works in his New York gallery from the 1950s, and then in 1962 after the amazing individual exhibition of the exclusive representation of the Artist took over, from this time Castelli organized regular exhibitions with Lichtenstein's works.

This year and afterwards, many galleries were created in New York, which are committed to modern art, and works by Lichtenstein were at some point in each of these galleries: initially often at John Heller, in the Pace Gallery and the Brooke Alexander Gallery , Mary Boone and Rosa Esman, with Marilyn Pearl and James Goodman, at Blum Helman, Phyllis Kind, Hirschl & Adler,, Getler Pall, at Holly Solomon and Condon Riley, the Sperone Westwater Galleries and at Mitchell-Innnes & Nash.

Towards the end of his life, his art had also come into the sphere of influence of the mighty empire of the Gagosian Galleries - one could say that Lichtenstein accompanied the New York gallery history with his works of art.

Also from the 1960s, Lichtenstein was presented by Ileana on Saturday (formerly Ileana Castelli) and her gallery in Paris, it is thanks to her that a European market was created for Andy Warhol , Roy Lichtenstein and other pop art artists. Other galleries showed its art in other places in the United States, such as the Ferus Gallery founded in 1957 in Los Angeles.

Due to the committed sales efforts of all of these gallery owners, Lichtenstein became unstoppable, but the artist owes the real financial success of a different form of sales: very early on "Lichtenstein's" could outstanding results on art auctions . Like 1970 the "Big Painting No. 6" (created in 1965), which in one of the New York Sotheby’s branch organized auction for $ 75,000 to the German art dealer and gallery owner Rudolf Zwirner.

Such weak records shouldn't stay, "Torpedo ... go!" From 1963 in Christie’s American November auction in 1989 was already sold for $ 5.5 million and promoted Lichtenstein to the three-way of the artist paid for individual works of art.

Where he stayed, at the next November auction of Christie's in New York, the "Kiss II" away for $ 6.0 million, outbided by "Happy Tears" , in Christie's November auction in 2002 through a purchase price of $ 7.1 million.

Now a big and gratifying jump was followed: in 2005 "In The Car" (1963) was sold for $ 16.25 million, in 2010 "Ohhh ... Alright ..." from 1964 received the contract at $ 42.6 million, in 2011 Lichtenstein's keyhole was "I Can See the Whole Room! ... and there's Nobody in it!" From 1961 sold for $ 43 million and brought the widow of the Time Warner Managing Director Steve Ross a little over 2000 percent (Ross bought the picture in 1988 for 2.1 million).

Everything back in Christie's New York November auction, only in 2012 it was the turn of the Sotheby's auction house because Christie's wanted to concentrate on abstract expressionists - a good idea, a picture of Mark Rothko went over the table for almost $ 87 million. Sotheby's, on the other hand, was only able to take $ 44.8 million for Lichtenstein's “Sleeping Girl” from 1964, but at least a new Lichtenstein record.

In the spring auction in 2013, the art of Lichtenstein returned to Christie's, on May 15, 2013, the "Woman with Flowered Has" from 1963 achieved a new record price of $ 56.1 million in a long -lived manner.

Unfortunately, Lichtenstein himself only noticed part of the double -digit million successes, he died in 1997 .

It can be excited to see which heights the price spiral of his works of art are still turning, especially before the H

Auction records in the 21st century

The previous maximum price for a painting by Roy Lichtenstein was achieved in November 2015 with Christie's in New York. "Nurse 1964" work changed owners for $ 95,365,000 (approx. 85 million euros). It was originally entitled "Frightenedness" and was one of the collections of some renowned art lovers such as Leon Kraushar and Karl Ströher.

The square painting from 1964 measures one meter in height and width and was estimated at over $ 80 million. “Nurse” was auctioned at the special auction “The Artist's Muse” at Christie's, which includes works by painters and sculptors that were created between the 1860s and 2000s.

The most expensive painting that Lichtenstein has ever created could be his work "Masterpiece" from 1962, which used to belong to Agnes Gund. Steven Cohen is said to have bought it in a private sale for $ 165 million in 2017. The public auctions of Lichtenstein's works of art have not yet reached this sum. Nevertheless, with his ten best results in public auctions, the artist is one of the best -selling artists and is seen as a pioneer on the art market.

The “Sleeping Girl” of the pop art artist, which achieved almost $ 45 million in New York in 2012, is the second-tax work The painting from 1964 was sold at an auction of Sotheby's for $ 44,882,500.

The signed lithographs and original screen prints are very popular with art collectors worldwide, even though they are mass productions. The best known original graphics include "Shipboard Girl" , "Crying Girl" and "Nude Reading" .

Albertina celebrated the 100th birthday of the pop art master

Albertina honored the master of pop art this summer with a comprehensive retrospective , which included over 90 paintings, sculptures and graphics by the artist, which unique and high-style unique.

The most important works of its most extensive artistic work are brought to Vienna through generous loans of 30 renowned museums, including exhibits from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery in Washington, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

The exhibition was designed in cooperation with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and was based on a generous gift of around 100 works to Albertina.

The exhibition presented the early works from the 1960s, including the pop art masterpiece of this era: "Look Mickey" . In addition, iconic paintings of advertising stands in black and white, landscapes in enamel technology and works of art, which were inspired by Picasso, Dalì, Kirchner and Pollock, could be seen.

A particularly impressive highlight was a monumental brushstroke sculpture, which loosened from the canvas and dominated the room.

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero

Owner and managing director of Kunstplaza . Publicist, editor and passionate blogger in the field of art, design and creativity since 2011. Successful conclusion in web design as part of a university degree (2008). Further development of creativity techniques through courses in free drawing, expression painting and theatre/acting. Profound knowledge of the art market through many years of journalistic research and numerous collaborations with actors/institutions from art and culture.

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