Crak!

Roy Lichtenstein, a seminal figure in the advent of Pop Art in America in the 1960s, appropriated imagery and pictorial ideas from comic strips and commercial printing techniques for his paintings and prints. Motifs were stylized, reduced to their most essential coloristic and formal elements, enlarged within a pictorial space, and isolated from their narrative contexts - resulting in a new form of abstraction based on the strict alteration of realistic source material. Crak!, which closely follows these aesthetic principles, was produced as a poster to advertise Lichtenstein's one-man exhibition in 1963 at Leo Castelli Gallery. Though not one of the 300 signed, dated (1964), and numbered edition, this print was produced at the time of the show. It is a characteristic example of Lichtenstein's important early work and the development of Pop Art.