Roy Lichtenstein Water Lilies - Pink Flower (C.261) 1992 For Sale

Roy Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies - Pink Flower, 1992 is one of the last artworks he created. The artist died five years after making this print and the creative boundaries he pushed within this innovative Water Lilies series make it one of his most technically interesting. 

Similarly to the other prints in the series, in Water Lilies - Pink Flower,  Lichtenstein pays homage to the European old master tradition by taking Claude Monet’s famous impressionist Water Lilies paintings and reinventing them through his pop art framework. In order to create the ephemeral quality of the waterlily motifs and to translate the lightness and transience of Monet’s paintwork through pop arts’ mass printing production, Lichtenstein explored new materials and creative techniques to bring to life the lightness and colour of the floating buds.

In Water Lilies - Pink Flower, similarly to the Water Lilies- Blue Lily Pad print, Lichtenstein uses, for the first time, screen-printed enamel on processed and swirled stainless steel, with painted and routered relief wood frame to create the visceral sense of Monet’s paintings and the movement and motion of nature. The artist’s pop art characteristics still simmer from the surface of the print: Lichtenstein’s use of swirled reflective panels, layered forms, vertical panels of Ben Day dots, and diagonal lines combine to create the composition. 

Lichtenstein also introduced new innovative materials into the formal elements in this process, including experimenting with enamel, Plexiglas, Mylar and Rowlux: in a labour intensive process, a drill press was suspended upside down from the ceiling and fitted with a round slug of shoe rubber to create the swirls which are all rendered into the precise framework.

From the flat surfaces, illusions of depth and texture, and his signature patterns, in Water Lilies - Pink Flower, Lichtenstein creates a whole new art form with this beguiling print work.