CRACK!, 1963/1964: Print by Roy Lichtenstein

  • CRAK!, 1963/1964 print by Roy Lichtenstein
    CRAK!, 1963/1964
    Offset lithograph on lightweight, white wove paper
    Sheet: 19 1/4 x 27 5/8 in. (48.9 x 70.2 cm), Edition of 300
    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
    BACK TO: LEO CASTELLI GALLERY PRINTS

     

    Roy Lichtenstein’s Crying Girl was produced as an offset lithograph in an edition of 300 on lightweight white wove paper, published by the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and printed by Colorcraft. The work was created to coincide with Lichtenstein’s second solo exhibition at Castelli in 1963, with numbered impressions dated 1964 and typically signed in pencil.

     

    The composition presents a dramatic, comic-style scene of a woman in a beret aiming a rifle beyond the picture plane, surrounded by smoke and bursts of fire. The bold onomatopoeic “CRAK” dominates the image, accompanied by a speech bubble declaring, “Now, my little ones… For France!” The exaggerated narrative, sharp outlines and saturated colour encapsulate Lichtenstein’s engagement with war comic imagery and his transformation of mass-media graphics into monumental Pop Art statements.

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  • "Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms." 

     

    - Roy Lichtenstein

    Ben-Day dots are a mechanical printing technique originally used in commercial illustration and newspaper reproduction to create shading and tonal variation through small, evenly spaced coloured dots. Lichtenstein adopted and meticulously replicated this process by hand in his paintings and prints, enlarging the dots to monumental scale. By isolating and exaggerating this mass-production device, Lichtenstein exposed the visual language of popular media, transforming a functional printing method into one of the defining aesthetic signatures of Pop Art.