Gagosian brings Roy Lichtenstein’s graphic wit to Frieze Abu Dhabi
The gallery presents three decades of the Pop master's work on paper, from portraits to seascapes, coinciding with a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum.
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Gagosian’s presentation at Frieze Abu Dhabi this month gathers three decades of Roy Lichtenstein’s work on paper, sculptures and collages spanning 1965 to 1995. The selection arrives as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York opens “Roy Lichtenstein: Like New,” a major retrospective that illuminates the Pop art pioneer’s enduring mastery of colour, line and commercial visual language.
The Abu Dhabi presentation orchestrates portraits, landscapes, interiors and still life compositions that reveal the essential role of paper works within Lichtenstein’s vast practice. His characteristic wit sharpens each piece: bold outlines snap around forms; primary colours sit in close, vibrant relation; compositions possess both formal rigour and visual humour. Whether seascape or printed study, each work amplifies the artist’s preoccupation with pattern, domestic space and the visual vocabulary of mass production.
Lichtenstein’s approach to printmaking, refined through collaborations with workshops such as Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles during the 1980s, brought his graphic vision into increasingly refined territory. The works selected here chart that evolution, from early Pop interventions to later explorations of abstraction and landscape. Together they form an index to one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive and deliberately arresting artistic voices.
Gagosian presents the selection at Frieze Abu Dhabi, which opens later this month.
Imagery courtesy of Gagosian (@gagosian).