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

Offset lithograph by 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 Lichtenstein.

- Sheet dimensions: 28 x 36 cm
- Image 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 packaged in a reinforced cardboard carton. 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 the comic to turn it into museum material.
Roy Lichtenstein was a key figure in American pop, and as such drew inspiration for his work from both popular art—advertisements, magazines, comics…; and from the history of traditional art: Art Deco, cubism, abstract expressionism (which he initially practiced)…
Lichtenstein’s work is characterized by irony (something pop artists boasted about, sometimes disguised 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 then-fashionable abstract expressionism, but soon joined the rest of the pop guerrilla to rebel against abstraction and embrace figurative art. Moreover, figurativeness as popular and mechanical as possible.
Certainly there was nothing more popular and mechanical than a comic in 1958, so Lichtenstein decided he would create images of mass-produced commercial products.
That said… he reproduces by hand what seems to have been made by a machine.
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.
New Yorker by birth, Lichtenstein lived in this city, the capital of everything that pop represents, and he would die there at 73, celebrated as an artist who sold paintings for more than 40 million euros.