Roy Lichtenstein

If Andy Warhol has started painting Campbell soup cans and Lichtenstein has linked his name to the colorful images of the comics it is because of Leo Castelli’s fault or merit. Between 1960 and 1961, Warhol, at the time a very successful advertising graphic and illustrator, had created and exhibited his first pop paintings in a boutique window, choosing the heroes of the comics as the subject. In the same period, even an obscure New Jersey art teacher had started painting comics on canvas, his name was Roy Lichtenstein. His friend Allan Kaprow put him in a position to show his work to Ivan Karp, then director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Karp’s response to the history of art in the 1900s: “It was simply too shocking that someone wanted to celebrate comics or commercial images like those. And they were cold and empty and bold and overwhelming. So I said: . We took four. “