Roy Lichtenstein Water Lilies - Blue Lily Pad (C.262) 1992 For Sale

Roy Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies – Blue Lily Pads is part of the six screenprint series, Water Lilies, which came late in the artist’s career and is one of the most creative series of his oeuvre. In the Water Lilies series, Lichtenstein pays homage to an unlikely artistic bedfellow, Claude Monet, and his famous Impressionist series, breaking cultural barriers in the process.

Water Lilies – Blue Lily Pads is one of Lichtenstein’s most unique print processes: screenprinted enamel on processed and swirled stainless steel, with painted and routered relief wood frame. This print like the others in the Water Lilies series utilises processed and swirled stainless steel for the first time to evoke the movement and motion of nature’s finest water lily motifs and also to appear as if they are floating on reflected water. In fact the art of reflected water discernible in Water Lily – Blue Lily Pads is representative of Lichtenstein’s fascination with reflections in imagery, which he notably explored in his popular Reflection series.

Water Lily – Blue Lily Pads is round in composition – a rare form for the artist – but uses Lichtenstein’s signature style syntax to distil Monet’s famous ‘Nympheas’ into pop art form: vibrant hues, diagonal strips comprising patches of ben day dots, and black delineated outlines sit within the technically rigorous framed composition.

By juxtaposing such opposing art genres; the ethereal nature of Monet’s impressionism with the mass production commercial printing of the 60’s pop art genre, Lichtenstein broke cultural boundaries between high and low art, creating a whole new subject matter and art form for himself.