Martin Lawrence Galleries

About the Artist

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born in New York City on October 27, 1923. He grew up in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and had a passion for science and comic books. His father, Milton, was a successful real estate broker and his mother, Beatrice, exposed Lichtenstein to many aspects of New York culture by taking him to museums, concerts, and other functions. In his teens, his interest in art grew as he began drawing and taking courses on watercolor and sculpture. Later, he attended Ohio State University before being drafted to serve on European front for World War II. He then returned to Ohio State in 1946 to finish his undergraduate degree and received his Master’s in Fine Arts in 1949. In the late 1940s and early 50s, Lichtenstein began working in series, often taking artistic subjects from mythology and American history and folklore. Lichtenstein decided to an ironic reexamination of the nineteenth-century American genre paintings he saw in history books; creating Cubist interpretations of “Cowboys and Indians” amongst other Wild West characters, with a sense of faux-primitive whimsy.