LONDON (Reuters) - The first major retrospective show of
American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's work is to go on show for the first time
in 20 years at a gallery in London next year.
The Tate Modern is to host the most comprehensive collection
of the artist's work aiming to demonstrate the importance of Lichtenstein's
influence, his engagement with art history and his enduring legacy as an
artist.
Famed for his use of Ben-Day dots, bold lines and anguished
heroines portrayed in his earlier works, Lichtenstein, whose first exhibition
in 1968 was panned by art critics, pioneered a new style of painting inspired
by industrial print processes but executed by hand.
Curator Sheena Wagstaff, who spent four years working on the
exhibition, said she looked at 5,000 pieces of Lichtenstein's work before
whittling it down to the key 125 pieces that will go on show.
"He is a quintessential pop artist but there's a whole
lot of other work that you don't know about that is just as important,"
Wagstaff told reporters.
The show will feature influential paintings such as
"Drowning Girl" from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and
"Look Mickey", on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington
as well as the Tate's own "Wham!" piece.
"The highlights of the show, I think will be for many
people, revisiting old friends like the romance and war series with these sort
of great anguished heroines and this virile air force pilots," Wagstaff
told Reuters.
There are 125 works from private and public collections from
around the world, comprising paintings, sculptures and drawings.
There will be other highlights of the show that will
surprise visitors, Wagstaff added, such as a series of large nudes or the
sublime Chinese landscapes Lichtenstein painted in the final years of his life.
The exhibition which is a collaboration between the Art
Institute in Chicago, where it is currently being shown before moving to The
National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and London's Tate Modern.
The show, entitled "Lichtenstein: A
Retrospective", runs from February 21 to May 27.
"He is this creature of really absorbing ambiguity and
it's been a wonderful journey, for us curators to readdress the significance of
Lichtenstein," Wagstaff added.
"You recognize a Lichtenstein, whatever style he is
emulating."