Still Life with Windmill, 1974: Print from the Six Still Lifes series

  • Roy Lichtenstein *Still Life with Windmill* (1974), featuring a pitcher, lemons, and cloth on a table with an open window revealing a stylised windmill landscape.
    Still Life with Windmill, 1974
    Lithograph and screenprint with debossing on BFK Rives paper, sheet: 91.2 x 113.8 cm
    Edition of 100; plus 14 AP
    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
     
    BACK TO: SIX STILL LIFES SERIES
     
    Still Life with Windmill, 1974, presents a carefully staged interior scene in which everyday objects are arranged against a stylised backdrop. A central pitcher dominates the composition, flanked by simplified lemons and a folded cloth, all set on a flat tabletop. Behind them, an open window reveals a windmill in a pared-down landscape, introducing an exterior element that contrasts with the domestic setting. The composition is flattened and structured through bold black outlines, diagonal hatching, while blocks of yellow, blue, green, and red create a strong, graphic rhythm across the surface.
     
    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 reinterprets traditional still life and landscape motifs through the visual language of Pop Art, merging interior and exterior spaces into a single, controlled image. By reducing objects and scenery to stylised forms and repeatable patterns, Lichtenstein transforms familiar subjects into a system of visual signs, emphasising composition, reproduction, and the constructed nature of representation over narrative or realism.

  • "I like to play with the viewer's perception of reality." 

     
    - Roy Lichtenstein
    Lichtenstein’s use of colour is deliberate, restrained, and highly controlled, often limited to bold primary tones such as red, yellow, and blue alongside black and white. Rather than modelling form or creating depth, colour is applied in flat, uniform areas that emphasise surface and graphic clarity. In works like this, colour functions as a structural tool, guiding the viewer’s eye and organising the composition, while reinforcing the mechanical, reproducible quality of the image.