In early 1961, Roy Lichtenstein was challenged by his young son to “paint as well” as the artists in the Mickey Mouse comics the boy was reading. Thus, an icon of the American pop art scene stumbled upon the format that would make him famous.

Two of his best-known works are the comic-inspired pieces, Whaam! and Drowning Girl, both produced in 1963. In these paintings, Lichtenstein uses a method of outlining figures with thick black strokes and fills areas of primary color with Benday dots to produce different hues and hues, practices reminiscent of the printing methods of the comic. books produced in the 60s and 70s.

Whaam! it was itself an adaptation of an actual illustration from a 1962 war comic published by DC. The painting is a diptych composed of an Air Force plane firing a rocket at an enemy that explodes in a brilliant display of red and yellow. In the style of comic book lettering, a caption on the first panel reads: “I pressed the fire control … and in front of me the rockets shot through the sky …” The illustration is marked in large letters that spell “Whaam!” when the rocket hits its target.

In Torpedo … Los !, the comic-themed panel shows a close-up of a submarine captain looking through a periscope. The scene is dotted with bold stripes of primary yellow and blue. The painting attracted a bid of more than $ 5 million when it was sold at auction in 1989.

The choice of content for Torpedo and Whaam! seems heavily influenced by Lichtenstein’s own military service, which interrupted his art studies at Ohio State University.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Lichtenstein began to broaden his focus, including continuing a series of “Artists Studios.” Look Mickey depicts a sparsely furnished study with Disney character Donald Duck in a painting on the study wall. Much of the space is represented in black and white, in contrast to the blue, yellow, and pops of red in the wall art. Donald Duck is fishing and his word balloon says, “Look Mickey, I snagged a big one!” A separate word balloon, not attached to any speaker, reads, “See that bald guy over there? That’s” Curly “Grogan. He and his mob run half the businesses in this town!”

Other works in the “Studios” series incorporate the work of other artists as background material for Lichtenstein’s paintings. Lichtenstein also dabbled in surrealism and even built metal and plastic sculptures such as Lamp in St. Mary’s, Georgia and The Head, in Barcelona.