As I Opened Fire [center panel]
1966
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
color offset lithograph on wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 64.1 x 53 cm (25 1/4 x 20 7/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of John Simmons
Accession Number
2004.137.2
Art Historical Context
Roy Lichtenstein's *As I Opened Fire [ panel]* (1966) is a striking color offset lithograph on wove paper, measuring 64.1 x 53 cm. As a key figure in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, Lichtenstein drew inspiration from mass-media imagery, particularly comic books, transforming their bold lines, Ben-Day dots, and dramatic narratives into high art. This center panel, part of a larger triptych, captures the explosive intensity of a wartime scene, with its vivid colors and typographic speech bubbles evoking the serialized heroism of mid-20th-century adventure comics. Printed via offset lithograp...
About the Artist
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was born on October 27, 1923, in New York City to Milton Lichtenstein, a real estate broker, and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein, a homemaker with musical training, in an upper-middle-class German-Jewish family. Growing up on the Upper West Side, he displayed early artistic talent, sketching jazz musicians and visiting museums like the Museum of Modern Art. In 1939, he studied painti...