Roy Lichtenstein: 1997

In 1997, at the age of seventy-three, Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) was as innovative and productive as ever. In addition to his studio painting practice, he was working on a variety of adventurous projects, among them two mural commissions, several large-scale sculptures, and a new series of prints. Decades after his paintings inspired by comics and other images of American consumer culture helped usher in the Pop art era, Lichtenstein began to expand his palette of mostly primary colors, adding vibrant highlights of mint green and turquoise, coral and cyan. He also started to make work without his signature bold black outlines, resulting in images that respond to the aesthetics of the early digital age. At the same time, he continued to reuse images, such as pyramids and brushstrokes, from his own work and to quote an array of visual references, including iconic works by Leonardo da Vinci and Henri Matisse, as he had done throughout his career. Lichtenstein fell ill in August 1997 and died unexpectedly the following month due to complications from pneumonia, leaving a number of works unfinished. Some were fabricated or completed posthumously, while others exist only as sketches. By bringing together materials related to these projects, many from the Whitney's collection, Roy Lichtenstein: 1997 offers insight into the range of the artist's late experimentation and illustrates his ongoing interest in new technologies and their effects on image making.