Apple with Black and Blue Background (Study)

In the early 1980s, American artist Roy Lichtenstein produced numerous acrylic on acetate works, often affixed to their corresponding pencil sketches. He found that, when applied to the non-absorbent acetate, each brushstroke congealed into a fixed, concise form that was easily replicable on a larger scale. Lichtenstein first explored the brushstroke as a subject in the mid-1960s, creating the eponymous series that satirized the grandiose gestures of the Abstract Expressionists. These works typically feature one or two, mimetic curvilinear strokes or splatters set atop a backdrop of his signature Ben Day dots. By the 1980s however, his brushstrokes became less replicative and more gestural, in the case of the Morgan works, rendering still lifes as abstracted forms in paint.