Modern Head 1, 1970: Woodcut on Japanese paper

  • Roy Lichtenstein Modern Head #1 (1970), featuring a fragmented geometric face built from bold red, blue, yellow, and black shapes with Ben-Day dots and curved forms.
    Modern Head #1, 1970
    Woodcut on Japanese Hoshi paper, sheet: 61.3 x 48.3 cm
    Edition of 100; plus 7 AP, 1 RTP, 1 PPII, 3 GEL, 1 C
    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein 
    BACK TO: MODERN HEAD SERIES

     

    Modern Head #1, 1970, presents a fragmented, geometric portrait constructed from interlocking planes of colour, line, and pattern. The face is not immediately legible, instead emerging through a system of curved forms, bold outlines, and Ben-Day dots across the composition. Areas of deep blue, red, and yellow are set against black and white sections, creating a  contrast that guides the viewer across the surface. Rather than modelling a human likeness, Lichtenstein builds the head as a structured image, where each segment functions as part of a larger, engineered whole.
     
    Produced as a woodcut on Japanese Hoshi paper, the work forms part of Lichtenstein’s Modern Head series, developed after his encounter with Alexei von Jawlensky’s portrait heads. Here, however, the expressive qualities of Jawlensky’s figures are stripped away and replaced with a mechanised visual language. Drawing on influences from Léger, Constructivism, and early twentieth-century industrial aesthetics, Lichtenstein transforms the human face into something closer to a manufactured object. 

  • "My work isn't about form. It's about seeing" 

     

    - Roy Lichtenstein

    In Modern Head #1, Lichtenstein uses colour in a highly controlled and deliberate way, limiting his palette to bold primary tones of red, blue, and yellow alongside black and white. Rather than modelling form or creating depth, colour is applied in flat, sharply defined sections that construct the image piece by piece. These blocks of colour act as structural elements, guiding the viewer across the composition and reinforcing the sense that the head is assembled rather than drawn.