Roy Lichtenstein

Donated by a Private Collection

Lausanne, FAE Musée D'Art Contemporain, Roy Lichtenstein, September 1992 - January 1993 (another example exhibited)
Tate Gallery Liverpool, Roy Lichtenstein, February - April 1993 (another example exhibited)
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal; Munich, Haus Der Kunst; Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Brussels, Les Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts; Columbus, Wexner Center for the Arts, Roy Lichtenstein, September 1994 - January 1996, cat. no. 274, p. 342, illustrated in color (another example exhibited)
Mexico City, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes; Mexico City, Salas Nacional y Diego Rivera; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Valencia, Insituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno; La Coruña, Fundacion Pedro Barrié de la Maza; Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Belem, Roy Lichtenstein, Escultura, Pintura y Gráfica / Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture & Drawings, July 1998 - August 2000 (another example exhibited)

Emilia Gedda, “Roy Lichtenstein,” Konstvarlden & Disajn, No. 4, 2003, pp. 44-49

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. The colors appear bright and fresh. The black painted base presents a faint mottling accretion to the surface, visible under raking light.
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As one of the most iconic Pop artists, Roy Lichtenstein was best known for his signature style that borrows from mass culture – particularly comic books and advertising. Lichtenstein's technique, which often involved the use of stencils, sought to bring the look and feel of commercial printing processes to his painting and prints. Through the use of primary colors, thick outlines, and Benday dots, Lichtenstein endeavored to make his hand-made art appear machine-made. By the mid-1960s, Lichtenstein was applying the same ethos to create Pop versions of Modern masters such as Cezanne, Picasso, and Mondrian. As if moving chronologically through art history, he rehashed in his own way the work of Cubists, Futurists, Purists, and Surrealists. He also produced sculptures using various, often painted, metals invoking the styles of Brancusi and Calder.

Mobile III is part of a series of standing mobiles inspired by Alexander Calder. Lichtenstein invoked and appropriated Calder’s works with his own visual language including circles, stripes and bold yellows. Interior with Mobile (1992) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York offers a quintessential Lichtenstein work containing a mobile similar to Mobile III. Interior with Mobile is one of a series of paintings Lichtenstein made in the early 1990s depicting domestic interiors. Painted on a very large scale, they were inspired by a billboard advertisement for a furniture store Lichtenstein had seen outside Rome in 1989. In Interior with Mobile, Lichtenstein continues the Pop tradition, exploiting both commercial techniques and imagery. Blown-up to this monumental scale, the stripes and Benday dots – used to represent color and tone in the print technology of the source material – become conspicuous features of the design in their own right. Whereas earlier works were drawn directly on the canvas from smaller sketches, in this series Lichtenstein made use of a projector to enlarge the design to the appropriate size. But offering only a minimum of information, Lichtenstein gives enough detail for the viewer to complete the picture, for the work to become a believable representation. The partially displayed mobile complements the blunt geometry of the room and pays homage to Alexander Calder, as in Mobile III.