Moonscape
1965 (published 1966)
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
color screenprint on blue Rowlux
Dimensions
sheet: 50.6 x 60.8 cm (19 15/16 x 23 15/16 in.) framed: 68.6 x 78.7 x 4.4 cm (27 x 31 x 1 3/4 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Francine Schear Linde, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art
Accession Number
1991.239.1.3
Art Historical Context
Roy Lichtenstein's *Moonscape* (1965, published 1966) captures artist's signature Pop Art flair, transforming comic book aesthetics into fine art. Created the Space Race era, when NASA's Apollo missions captivated the world, this screenprint evokes the stark, otherworldly drama of lunar landscapes as depicted in mid-20th-century science fiction comics. Lichtenstein, a leading figure in Pop Art alongside Andy Warhol, drew inspiration from these mass-media sources, boldly cropping and magnifying their imagery to comment on consumer culture and celebrity. The work's innovative medium—a color scr...
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...