Surrealist Series: 1978 by Roy Lichtenstein

 

In 1977, Roy Lichtenstein began developing a body of work now referred to as the Surrealist series, producing nearly fifty paintings by 1979 alongside a group of American Indian-inspired Surrealist works. Drawing on the compositional logic of early twentieth-century Surrealism, particularly the influence of Magritte, Lichtenstein combined dreamlike spatial arrangements with his own Pop vocabulary of eyes, lips, stripes and Ben-Day dots. The result is a hybrid language that merges the psychological tension of Surrealism with the clarity and detachment of Pop.

 

In early 1978, Lichtenstein translated these ideas into a suite of six Surrealist prints at Gemini G.E.L. Unlike his earlier reliance on photographic and mechanical processes, he worked directly onto the plates and stones using Spectracolor pencil and tusche, introducing a more immediate drawing method. One impression of each print was designated to support Change, Inc., the artists’ emergency fund founded by Robert Rauschenberg, further situating the Surrealist prints within the broader artistic community of the period.