Na Sotheby's, Roy Lichtenstein começando em US$ 400

Sotheby's is auctioning a hundred paintings, prints, sculptures and sketches by Roy Lichtenstein, a leading figure in Pop Art alongside Andy Warhol, for up to US$ 400. The auction, titled Reflections on Pop: Works from the Collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, is divided into two stages: a physical auction with 23 lots at The Breuer gallery tomorrow, and a virtual auction with 120 works at lower prices, accepting bids until Friday.

The virtual auction allows bidding on items ranging from a Roy Lichtenstein designed cover for the 1964 Pop Art anthology One Cent Life (starting at US$ 400) to a pencil study (US$ 180,000) for his future work Blue Nude (1995). The New York City auction is expected to see the paper-based Interior with Painting of Nude (1997) sell for at least US$ 1 million, as indicated by the auction's name.

The items belong to Roy's collection and that of his second wife Dorothy, who passed away in 2024. Since then, Sotheby's has sold 270 pieces from the estate for US$ 176 million, according to the artnet website. Roy and Lichtenstein's two sons from his first marriage, David and Mitchell, now run a foundation named after the father, dedicated to cataloguing and promoting his work.

Born in 1923 in New York, Lichtenstein studied art at Ohio State and was influenced by expressionism and cubism before contributing to the popularization of Pop Art in the 1960s. He began incorporating cartoons into his abstract works, then borrowed elements and cartoon aesthetics to create concrete compositions in painting and sculpture that tested the boundaries of art and American consumerism.

Almost an AI before AI. For those in NYC, the auction serves as a preview for the Roy Lichtenstein: Like New exhibition, which will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 11 to May 10 of next year.