Roy Lichtenstein - Kiss V - offset lithography - licensed print 2004

Offset lithograph of Roy Lichtenstein (*)
Reproduction of the work “Kiss V,” created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1964.
Deluxe edition on coated art paper (250 g/m²)
Print authorized by the Estate of Roy Liechtenstein.

- Sheet dimensions: 28 x 36 cm
- Motif dimensions: 20 x 20 cm
- Year: 2004
- Condition: Excellent (this work has never been framed or exhibited, always kept in a professional art folder, and is offered in perfect condition).
- Provenance: Private collection.

The work will be carefully handled and packed in reinforced cardboard packaging. The shipment will be sent with a tracking number.

The shipment will also include transport insurance for the final value of the work with full reimbursement in case of loss or damage, at no cost to the buyer.

(*) The painter and sculptor who plundered from the comic to turn it into museum material.
Roy Lichtenstein was one of the key figures of American pop, and as such drew inspiration for his work from popular art: advertisements, magazines, comics…; as well as from the history of traditional art: Art Deco, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism (which he was involved in at the beginning of his career)…
Lichtenstein’s work is characterized by irony (something pop artists boasted about, sometimes masked as snobbery or superficiality…), the use of Ben-Day dots (used in graphic arts) and industrial colors, the language of comics (onomatopoeia, panels, narrative) and mastery of line.
Lichtenstein began in the fashionable Abstract Expressionism, but soon joined the rest of the pop guerrillas to rebel against abstraction and employ figuration. Moreover, the more popular and mechanical the figuration, the better.
Certainly there was nothing more popular and mechanical than a comic in 1958, so Lichtenstein decided to create images of mass-produced commercial production.
That said… what seems to have been done by a machine is reproduced by hand.
These images were faithful portraits of consumer society and mass culture, which may or may not be a critique of the contemporary world, an idealization or a satire of Western capitalist society.
That ambiguity between critique and admiration, between mockery and respect, is typical of pop art, which cynically plays at a masquerade.
Born in New York, Lichtenstein lived in this city, the capital of everything that represents pop, and he would die there at 73, celebrated as an artist who sold paintings for more than 40 million euros.