Still Life with Portrait, 1974: Lithograph and screenprint on paper

  • Still Life with Portrait, 1974 by Roy Lichtenstein
    Still Life with Portrait, 1974
    Lithograph and screenprint with debossing on BFK Rives paper, sheet: 120 x 95.4 cm
    Edition of 100; plus 14 AP
    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
     
    BACK TO: SIX STILL LIFES SERIES
     
    Still Life with Portrait, 1974, presents a layered composition that merges interior space with traditional still life elements. In the foreground, a plate of fruit including an apple and cherries, sits alongside simplified domestic forms, rendered in bold red and yellow. Behind this, a framed portrait of a woman appears, drawn in Lichtenstein’s signature linear style. The composition is flattened and segmented, with strong outlines and diagonal hatching creating a structured, graphic surface that blurs distinctions between objects, figures, and space.
     
    Produced as a lithograph and screenprint with debossing on BFK Rives paper, the work forms part of Lichtenstein’s Six Still Lifes series. Here, he expands the still life genre by incorporating portraiture, referencing both classical painting traditions and mass-produced imagery. By reducing figures and objects to stylised forms and bold colour blocks, Lichtenstein transforms familiar motifs into a system of visual signs, emphasising reproduction and composition over narrative.

  • "The purpose of art is to make people see and feel in a new way." 

     

    - Roy Lichtenstein

    In works like Still Life with Portrait, Lichtenstein turns everyday domestic scenes into structured visual systems, using familiar objects such as fruit, furniture, and interior details as his subject matter. Rather than presenting these scenes as lived or intimate spaces, he strips them back into flat, graphic compositions defined by line, pattern, and colour. This approach removes any sense of spontaneity or personal narrative, instead treating the domestic environment as a set of repeatable motifs.