Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was one of the most successful and influential artists of the 20th century, helping pioneer and define Pop Art in the 1960's.

Lichtenstein's signature style mined images from comic books and advertisements, elevating them beyond their humble or banal sources. Using hand-painted, single-color Ben-Day dots, Lichtenstein sought to emphasis the artificiality of his images by mimicking the look of commercial press production - to the point that his own brushstrokes nearly disappear.

Artificiality, appropriation, parody, consumer culture, and the undying question "What is considered art?" were asked by Pop Art - and all play an obvious and essential role in Lichtenstein's oeuvre.

Having achieved international recognition and success throughout the 1960's, Lichtenstein turned away form his comic book subjects and began experimenting with new subjects and styles. During this time he created a body of work exploring cubism, surrealism, and the limits of a 'signature style'.

"Flowers" is an immediately recognizable example from this exceptional era of Lichtensteins work. Lichtenstein would juxtapose, crop, fragment, and recompose still-life's. This image is Lichtenstein's cubist rendering of flowers with an entablature emerging from the lower right corner.

Here Lichtenstein merges the entablatures with still-life flowers, an art history staple, all rendered in a cubist style - but executed in his signature primary color palette and line shading. Lichtenstein brought the traditions of still-life, Greek architecture, and Cubism into his contemporary art practice.