A popular American ‘pop artist’ Roy Fox Lichtenstein or Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was born in New York City into an upper-middle-class family. He attended public school until he was 12 years old. Lichtenstein had a diverse career as a teacher, artist, as well as being an innovator. Although he trained in both drawing and painting, a significant influence on his work was comics, cartoons, and popular advertising, basically the creative things that people didn’t consider “serious” art. Lichtenstein called his ‘Pop Art’ as “not ‘American’ painting, but industrial painting.” Lichtenstein’s initial interest in art and design was more of a hobby. He was a fan of jazz and frequently made portraits of musicians who played instruments. After graduating from school, Lichtenstein took summer classes at the Art Students League in New York. He later joined Ohio State University to study Fine Arts, but was unable to complete his studies due to a three-year stint (1943-46) in the military during and after World War II. His work in the early 1950s alternated between “expressionism” and “cubism.” Towards the end of the 1950s, Roy turned to “abstract expressionism.” Roy’s most famous and well-known creation is undoubtedly “Whaam!” (1963).

The inspiration behind “Whaam!” It was a picture from an ‘All American Men of War’ comic, published in 1962 by DC comics. The painting shows a rocket fired by a fighter jet towards an enemy plane, along with a red-yellow explosion. To add interest, the painting has the onomatopoeic words “Whaam!” on it, along with the caption that reads: “I pressed the fire control … and in front of me, rockets blazed across the sky …” “Whaam!”, a diptych, is a great painting, which It measures 1.7 x 4.0 m (5 ft 7 in x 13 ft 4 in) and is currently on display at the Tate Modern in London, England.

Lichtenstein had the unique ability to create an extremely personalized painting from an existing cartoon or advertisement. He had the ability to adapt and work on original images and present intense emotional situations and scenes, in a rather impersonal way, leaving the interpretation of the subject to the viewer. Thus, he presented familiar images in a whole new light, capturing the imagination of the world. Apart from paintings, Lichtenstein also created plastic and metal sculptures and also a great deal of screen printing. Although most of his most famous creations are fairly close, though not strictly, to comic book panel copies, Lichtenstein stopped working on this subject in 1965. But not before he had created astonishing paintings depicting ‘pop art ‘and his most famous creation, “Whaam!”