Between 1961 and 1968, Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) created some fifty large-format, highly detailed black-and-white drawings that represent one of the most important Pop-Art contributions to the history of drawing. The motifs stem from the consumer world and were radically new at the time, not only in their imagery but also their style, deliberately reminiscent of substandard commercial art. These independent drawings appropriate tawdry illustrations from packaging, advertisements, and comic books and transform them into works of striking visual intensity, tying in to the clean-edge aesthetic of geometric abstraction in the sixties.
This richly illustrated publication provides a new basis for research on Lichtenstein's early Pop Art years and includes material on the largely unknown 1967Aspen project, in which the artist transformed a space into a black-and-white cartoon drawing.