Water Lilies - Pink Flower, 1992: By Roy Lichtenstein

  • A framed image featuring a stylised pink water lily and floating pads on a reflective pond.
    Water Lilies – Pink Flower, 1992
    Screenprinted enamel on processed and swirled stainless steel, with painted and routered relief wood frame
    Framed: 110.5 x 97.8 cm
    Edition of 20; plus 1 BAT, 5 AP, 2 PP, 2 Presentation Proofs, 1 NGA archive proof, 2 STA

    ©The Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

    BACK TO: WATER LILIES SERIES

     

    Water Lilies – Pink Flower (1992) is one of two prints in Roy Lichtenstein's later Water Lilies series to feature a painted and routered relief wooden frame. In an oval-shaped composition, the titular pink flower is notably small and tucked away in the far-right corner of the image, functioning less as a focal centre and more as a quiet accent within the broader field of floating lily pads. This subtle placement shifts emphasis away from a singular bloom and toward the overall structure of the pond’s surface. In fact, the other two blooms feature Lichtenstein's signature Ben-Day dots in red, carefully added over a bright yellow shade.
     
    Fabricated in screenprinted enamel on processed and swirled stainless steel, the work’s material presence is essential to its effect. The steel ground catches and reflects light, so the surface never appears entirely fixed; it shifts slightly and is activated by the movements of the viewer's body.

  • "I smiled at the idea of making a mechanical Monet."

     

    - Roy Lichtenstein

    Whereas throughout the 1960s Lichtenstein had transformed comic strips and advertisements into high art; by the 1990s, he turned that same analytical lens toward canonical painting. In the Water Lilies series, he engages directly with the legacy of Claude Monet, but filters Impressionism through his own graphic vocabulary of pattern and mechanical finish.