Download - Pinacothèque de Paris

THE EXHIBITION:
“Roy Lichtenstein : Evolution” revealed the
intermediate phase of the artist’s work
process, related to his sketches, drawings
and collages that end on a large choice of
paintings and sculptures. The majority of the
works have never been shown in France.
This new exhibition goes further and seeks to reconstruct the distinct phases of
the artist’s creation in its totality and evidence its evolution from his sources of
inspiration to the final consequences - the completed works - revealing
Lichtenstein’s incessant search among the different pathways of art. They are
routes that at first appear mysterious but that are gradually revealed by the very
process of creation and development in the artist’s work over a span of four
decades.
The works, that come mainly from private collections with documentary loans
from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in New York offer for the first time complete
scenarios of creation.
We discover the Lichtenstein’s sources: there are popular figures from the cartoon
world such as Dagwood, Tintin and Donald Duck. There are protagonists
from girls’ comics like Girls’ Romances, Heart Throbs and Secret Hearts, or true
classic symbols such as the Hellenistic Laocöon, landscapes by Van Gogh and
Cézanne, bathers and portraits by Picasso, nudes and interiors by Matisse,
Monet’s waterlilies and Brancusi’s endless column. There are also diverse themes
from art history, such as the landscapes of Chinese painting, still lifes and studio
models, representations of interiors - that also allude to the artist’s own
interiority - and exteriors that refer to the public domain.
They are references with which Lichtenstein dialogues, and to which he pays,
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