Roy Lichtenstein Chronology: the 1940s
1940De Kooning begins his first Woman series.
June. R.L.graduates from Franklin.
July 1-Aug. 9. Attends painting class taught by Reginald Marsh at the Art
Students League (215 West 57th Street), painting directly from the model and
studying anatomical drawing and Renaissance techniques, such as glazing and
underpainting, applied to subjects of modern life.
Sept. View magazine premieres in New York; its editor is Charles Henri Ford.
Duchamp and Joseph Cornell later contribute cover designs.
Autumn. R.L. begins studies in fine arts at Ohio State University and takes
first drawing classes with Prof. Hoyt L. Sherman.
Oct. Mondrian arrives in New York.
Early Nov. Man Ray, who had been living in Paris since 1921, returns to U.S.
and settles in Hollywood.
1941
Jan. 22-May 27. MoMA presents Indian Art of the United States, organized by
Frederic H. Douglas and René d'Harnoncourt.
July 14. Ernst arrives in New York via Lisbon with Peggy Guggenheim. In
December, they marry.
1942
R.L.resides at 1968 Iuka Avenue in Columbus.
Makes paintings that are copies of works by Picasso (such as Portrait of
Gertrude Stein, 1906) and Georges Braque.
Feb. 9-28. Mondrian has his first solo exhibition in New York, at Valentine
Gallery (55 East 57th Street).
June 25. Duchamp arrives in New York from Paris and stays briefly with
Ernst. (In 1943, he sets up a studio and residence at 210 West 14th Street,
and in 1959 he moves to 28 West 10th Street.)
Oct. 14-Nov. 7. First Papers of Surrealism exhibition is held in New York at
the Reid Mansion (451 Madison Avenue), with works by Arp, William Baziotes,
Alexander Calder, Ernst, Klee, Miró, Robert Motherwell, Picasso, and others,
and an installation by Duchamp that fills the exhibition space with string,
like an enormous spiderweb.
Oct. 20. Peggy Guggenheim opens Art of This Century in New York
(30 West 57th Street), with gallery spaces designed by Frederick Kiesler.
Over five years, the gallery mounts solo exhibitions by Baziotes, Hofmann,
Motherwell, Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and
others.
1943
The W.P.A. is officially disbanded.
Feb. R.L. is drafted into U.S. Army; he is inducted at Fort Dix in New
Jersey.
Feb. 7. Musician and composer John Cage performs at his début concert, at
MoMA, with a piece that involves musicians producing sounds using
unconventional objects.
March. R.L.begins basic training at Camp Hulen in Texas, an anti-aircraft
training base.
Winter. Enters engineering A.S.T.P. (Army Special Training Program) at De
Paul University in Chicago, where he takes classes in math and science for
two semesters before army cancels program.
1944
R.L.arrives at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, for its
pilot-training program. Due to the enormous number of casualties in the
Battle of the Bulge and the consequent need for soldiers to replace them,
the program is terminated.
Reports for active duty in engineer battalion of 69th Infantry Division of
the 9th Army.
1945
Feb. R.L.'s division is shipped to England on the ship
Le Jeune. Overseas tour of duty includes stops in France and Belgium and
combat engagements in Germany.
During his time in the service, R.L. draws landscapes and portraits of
soldiers and other people in his sketchbooks.
March. Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounts a retrospective of Man Ray's
paintings, objects, and photographs.
Oct.-Nov. R.L. enrolls in history and French language classes at the Cité
Universitaire in Paris. His studies are interrupted after just a month and a
half, when he is furloughed to visit his father, who is extremely ill.
Returns to U.S. and reports to Fort Dix.
1946
Jan. R.L.'s father dies; later that month, he is discharged from the army as
Private First Class, with a medal for Meritorious Service.
Returns to Ohio State University to complete his degree under the G.I. Bill.
Attends painting classes taught by Sherman and begins to incorporate into
his own work the theories developed by Sherman in his "flash lab."
March 30. New Yorker critic Robert Coates coins the term Abstract
Expressionism.
May. Peggy Guggenheim closes Art of This Century and leaves New York for
Europe.
June. R.L. receives B.F.A. degree from Ohio State University.
Sept. 30-Oct. 19. Betty Parsons opens gallery in New York (15 East 57th
Street) with Northwest Coast Indian Painting, an exhibition organized by
Barnett Newman.
Autumn. R.L.enters graduate program at Ohio State University and joins Fine
Arts department as an instructor. Occasionally returns to New York and
begins to visit galleries, especially Charles Egan Gallery and Betty Parsons
Gallery on 57th Street. His work at the time is based on American genre
paintings, with recognizable subject matter, but the form is Cubist with
Expressionist overtones.
Dec. Hugo Gallery in New York (26 East 55th Street) shows Cornell's collaged
box constructions, some of which contain photographs of movie stars of the
day.
1947
De Kooning begins his second Woman series (which he continues until 1949).
Motherwell and Harold Rosenberg publish the first and only issue of
Possibilities, a periodical that includes statements by Newman, Pollock, and
others describing the impetus behind their works.
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting moves to a townhouse at 1071 Fifth
Avenue (at 88th Street).
Oct. Publication of Drawing by Seeing, a 62-page handbook by Sherman.
1948
March. Partisan Review publishes Clement Greenberg's article "The Decline of
Cubism," in which he declares that American art has finally broken with the
School of Paris and attained supremacy.
Autumn. At Still's suggestion, Baziotes, David Hare, Motherwell, and Rothko
form the Subjects of the Artist, a school in a loft at 35 East 8th Street,
with public lectures by artists.
Oct. Rauschenberg begins attending classes taught by Albers and others at
Black Mountain College.
Ellsworth Kelly begins studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where
he meets Jack Youngerman, French sculptor César [Baldaccini], and British
artist Eduardo Paolozzi.
1948-49
R.L.produces pastels, oils, and drawings. Subjects include musicians and
landscapes. Begins using fairy tales as subjects, and includes references to
"Beauty and the Beast" and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
1949
After studying at the University of South Carolina in 1947-48, Johns moves
to New York and briefly attends a commercial-art school before being
drafted.
March. R.L. receives M.F.A. degree from Ohio State University. Resides at
394 15th Avenue in Columbus.
Spring. Julien Levy Gallery closes.
May. The Subjects of the Artist school closes. Tony Smith, a sculptor and
professor at New York University, reopens it as Studio 35, with Friday
evening lectures by artists and invited intellectuals, and with studio space
for New York University students during the week.
June 12. R.L.marries Isabel Wilson (whom he had met earlier at the
Ten-Thirty Gallery in Cleveland [1515 Euclid Avenue], where she is
co-director).
Summer. Warhol begins doing commercial work.
Aug. 1-31. R.L.in first group exhibition, at Chinese Gallery in New York (38
East 57th Street).
Aug. 8. Life magazine features an article on Pollock entitled "Is He the
Greatest Living Painter in the U.S.?"
Autumn. A group of New York School artists, including de Kooning and Jack
Tworkov, form the Club for discussions and socializing. It meets first at an
artist's studio and then in a rented loft at 39 East 8th Street.
Through the G.I. Bill, Robert Indiana begins classes at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago.
Dec. 12-30. Ten-Thirty Gallery exhibits R.L.'s paintings with work by two
ceramists. Few of his works sell.
1949-50
Rauschenberg studies painting at the Art Students League.