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

Roy Lichtenstein offset lithography (*)
Reproduction of the work “Kiss V,” created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1964.
Luxurious edition on glossy 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 displayed, always kept in a professional art folder, therefore offered in perfect condition).
- Provenance: Private collection.

The work will be carefully handled and packaged in reinforced cardboard. 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 stripped 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 both popular art: advertising, magazines, comics…; and from the history of traditional art: Art Deco, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism (which he supported 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 Benday 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 guerrilla to rebel against the abstract and use figuration. Moreover, the more popular and mechanical the figure, the better.
Of course, in 1958 there was nothing more popular and mechanical than a comic, so Lichtenstein decided he would create mass-produced commercial images.
That said… what seems to have been produced by a machine is done by hand.
These images were faithful portraits of the 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.
A New Yorker by birth, Lichtenstein lived in this city, the capital of everything that pop represents, and he would die there at 73, hailed as an artist who sold paintings for more than 40 million euros.