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Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997

American artist, sculptor, painter, and printmaker Roy Lichtenstein captured the world's imagination with his pop-art style of painting based on popular advertising and comic-strip art. His early work incorporated abstract expressionism, but he soon began to include themes such as recomposed comic strips, cowboys and Indians, and paper money. Lichtenstein's trademark style included the use of primary colors heavily outlined in black. He had his first one-man show at the Castelli Gallery in 1962 and with it came wide renown. Four years later he showed at the Venice Biennale, and the Guggenheim Museum gave him a retrospective in 1969. BMW commissioned Lichtenstein to paint a Group 5 Racing Version of the BMW 320i in 1977 as the third installment in the BMW Art Car Project.