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The eight-print Brushstroke Figures are closely connected to Roy Lichtenstein’s early 1980s Brushstroke paintings and related sculpture, where diagonals, Benday dots, hard-edged cartoon lines, and more naturalistic strokes are combined to construct stylized faces and figures. Each print is based on a collage prototype made in the artist’s New York studio, underscoring their direct link to his mechanical processes.
Brushstroke Figures also marks Lichtenstein’s first collaboration with Graphicstudio in February 1987, and it stands out for its technical ambition. The project integrates screenprint, lithography, woodcut, and the newly developed waxtype process, producing complex, layered surfaces that echo the texture of the original collages. Lithographic wash effects were achieved using toner and alcohol applied by hand; woodcuts employed both birch and walnut blocks for varied grain effects and were cut by hand, router, and heliorelief, used for Benday dot passages. Lichtenstein also employed Graphicstudio’s waxtype method, in which pigmented beeswax is screenprinted, sometimes heat-fused and burnished to an encaustic-like finish, or left matte for a fabric-textured surface.
Nude, 1989Lithograph, waxtype, woodcut, and screenprint on paper. Image: 135.9 x 77 cm.Edition of 60; plus 1 BAT, 2 PP, 2 Presentation Proofs, 1 NGA archive proof, 1 Graphicstudio Proof, 1 USFP, 2 SP, 8 AP.©Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.
