WHAAM!
1963. Oil, acrylic and magna on canvas. 170 x 400 cm. Tate Modern Museum in London This painting, apart from being iconic for the pop art movement, is one of the most important in Lichtenstein's work. As this work is a diptych, two panels can be seen. The panel on the left shows a warplane launching a missile, which if you look at the panel on the right, you can see how it hits a second plane that burns in flames. Most of Lichtenstein's works were created from comics. In particular, he created this work using images from war comics, Whaam! adapts a panel created by Irv Novick from the story Star Jockey published in volume no. 89 of the DC Comics' All-American Men of War comics, The original drawing is part of a dream sequence of the fictional character Johnny Flying Cloud ("the Navajo ace), a P-51 Mustang pilot, who, taking as a scenario the Second world war, he imagines himself piloting a fighter jet while shooting other planes. In Lichtenstein's painting, both planes are replaced by other types of aircraft.
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Manhattan, EEUU 1923 - NY 1997,
TUNA ACADEMIA DE ARTES PLĂ STICAS https://tunacademia.wixsite.com/tunarte https://artefixio.blogspot.com/ tunaceramica@gmail.com
Hello, my name is Roy Fox Lichtenstein, one of the best known painters in pop art. I was born in New York on October 27, 1923 to an upper-middle-class Jewish family. My father Milton Lichtenstein was a real estate runner quite successful, my mother Beatrice a housewife who had studied as a pianist, she took me and my sister RĂŠnee to museums, concerts and other aspects of New York culture. I always liked art, I drew, painted and sculpted as a teenager and spent many hours at the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art which I loved. I played the piano like my mother, in addition to the clarinet. I loved jazz, so I used to hang out at midtown nightspots to hear it. I was going to Franklin's School for Boys, a private high school, and graduated at 17 in 1940. That summer I studied painting and drawing with Reginald Marsh. In September I entered the Ohio State University (OSU) which was preparing a fine arts diploma. I admired Rembrandt, HonorĂŠ Daumier and Picasso. My favorite painting of all history was Guernica. During this university period I made portraits and still lifes influenced by the style of Picasso and Braque. I also attended sculpture classes. The Second World War began and I was forced to interrupt my studies, I enlisted in the US Army from 1943 to 1946.
In war I carried a sketchbook where I sketched landscapes and portraits of soldiers. When the war ended, I went back to my studies in Ohio and when I finally passed my graduation certificate in 1949, I was hired as a teacher. The following year I participated in a group exhibition at the Ten-Thirty Gallery in Cleveland, there I met Isabel Wilson, the gallery assistant, whom I married. I painted from simple welldelineated biomorphic forms, in the style of Paul Klee, then I painted subjects inspired by fairy tales that were surrounded by a selection of surreal flora and fauna. In 1952 I have my first exhibition in a Gallery in New York. That same year I moved to Cleveland where I will be six years without stopping to travel to New York frequently. Between two periods of artistic production, I carried out different trades, from draftsman to window decorator.
After 1957-1958 I began to experiment with images taken from the comics on mint gum wrapping papers, interpreted them freely, and mixed them with images taken from the pictures of the old west by another American artist, Frederic Remington.
Starting in 1961, I devoted myself entirely to producing art using mass-produced commercial images. My comic strips are enlargements of cartoon characters, reproduced by hand, using the same dotting technique and the same bright, primary colors that were used to print them. My latest works, including reproductions of very popular characters from the rose novel, stylized landscapes and copies of classic temple postcards, show the influence of the artists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso that I admired so much. Also my sculptures recreate the effects of comics. I also did some works in ceramics. I was so successful that in 1993 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York exhibited a retrospective of my work that traveled to many other countries. In 1965 I divorced Isabel and later I married Dorothy Herzka. we rented a house in Southampton, New York. From 1970 until my death, I divided my time between Manhattan and Southampton. In 1997, I died of pneumonia at New York University Medical Center, leaving an important legacy.