This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery. Please follow the links below for related online resources or visit our current exhibitions schedule.
|
Related Resources View all 13 Drawings Biography of Works by Roy Lichtenstein's Roy Lichtenstein's prints illustrated in the NGAkids "Inside Scoop" Borrow and Browse |
Roy Lichtenstein's widow and sons, Dorothy, David, and
Mitchell, and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation have donated
to the National Gallery of Art thirteen drawings that are directly
related to eleven of the artist's paintings in the Robert
and Jane Meyerhoff Collection. The gift was made in memory
of Jane Meyerhoff, who died October 16, 2004, and who, with
her husband, in 1987 promised their entire collection of late
twentieth-century art to the National Gallery of Art. The Lichtenstein
drawings span two decades and range in date from 1973 to 1992.
Roy Lichtenstein (1923&nd1997), one of the most recognizable American artists of the late twentieth century, emerged as a leading practitioner of pop art in the early 1960s and went on to explore a variety of subjects and art movements. Drawing was crucial to his style and was also the means by which he conceived and carried out his paintings. Using an opaque projctor, he would cast an enlarged image of a drawing onto canvas, and that projected image would serve as the painting's launching point.
The drawings on view include a triptych from 1974 in which Lichtenstein progressively reworked the rudimentary image of a cow in a landscape. In two 1978 studies for Razzmatazz, among the most dazzling and complex drawings in the gift, Lichtenstein fused such disparate elements as a surrealist abstract form, a conventional folding chair, and a seemingly disembodied jacket. His 1992 Study for "Bedroom at Arles" is a highly inventive and witty interpretation of Vincent van Gogh's famous 1888 painting of the same name.
For nearly 50 years, Robert and Jane Meyerhoff amassed one of the world's most outstanding collections of postwar art, primarily American. The Meyerhoffs, who had personal ties with many of the artists represented in their collection, met Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein in the mid-1970s. The two couples became close friends, often spending summer vacations together.
