Brushstroke with Spatter

1966 · Painting

May one see it?

Not receiving at present

Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

Checked: 2 hours ago
In this state since: Aug 19, 2026
Source: The museum's own collection data

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About the painting

Roy Lichtenstein rose to prominence at the beginning of the 1960s and became one of the best-known practitioners of Pop Art. His brightly painted canvases depicting everyday objects, as well as scenes of war and romance culled from the pages of contemporary comics, were rendered in stylized black outlines and hand-painted Ben Day dots that mimicked the commercial printing process. Thus he seemed to elevate what was often seen as low art—both its quotidian, affective subject matter and its visual terms—into high art. This was never simply a straightforward process of reversal, however, and by mid-decade Lichtenstein began to focus on subjects that reflected his lifelong interest in art historical themes.

Read on

Brushstroke with Spatter, from the Brushstroke series (1965–67), is a wry commentary on the bravura of midcentury Abstract Expressionism. Here Lichtenstein combines the gestural sweep of Willem de Kooning’s brushwork with the rhythmic drips typical of Jackson Pollock. He isolates and magnifies his stroke and spatter against a ground of Ben Day dots, reproducing the conventionally painterly elements as flatly as possible with no trace of emotion or texture. This deadpan rendering is not purely comic, but also establishes a tension key to the work’s success as an abstract painting in its own right, with grand scalar play and dramatic cropping, intensity of color, and the optical pulse of the dotted ground.

Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0

Particulars

Accession number: 1966.3

What it shows

Abstract shapes Yellow (color)Blue (color)

In the catalog

Pop Art United States

Sources

Art Institute of Chicago: the museum's own open data · fetched 6 days ago
Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder

Meanwhile, in the life of Roy Lichtenstein

The whole life

1963–1964
Leaves Rutgers and returns to New York
In September 1963 Lichtenstein took a leave of absence from Douglass College at Rutgers; in 1964 he moved back to New York to be at the centre of the art scene and resigned from Rutgers to concentrate on his painting.
1964
The first American to exhibit at the Tate Gallery
Lichtenstein became the first American to exhibit at the Tate Gallery in London, in the show “’54–’64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade”.
1964
Life magazine asks: “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?”
When Lichtenstein’s work was first exhibited, many critics challenged its originality and called it vulgar and empty; a Life magazine article of 1964 was headed “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?”. The artist replied that the closer his work is to the original, the more threatening and critical its content.
1967
First museum retrospective in Pasadena
In 1967 the Pasadena Art Museum in California held Lichtenstein’s first museum retrospective.
1967
First solo exhibitions in Europe
In the same year, 1967, Lichtenstein’s first solo exhibition in Europe was held at museums in Amsterdam, London, Bern and Hannover.
1968
Married: Dorothy Lichtenstein