Pop Art Print

Pop Art first appeared during the 1950s in the United Kingdom and has continued to inspire artists and audiences around the world today. Colored silk screen prints are as popular as ever.

Pop Art comes from the term 'Popular Art' and was one of the key art movements of the 20th century. It's characterized by the subjects it deals with as well as the techniques it employs. Pop Art does not depict noble or aristocratic figures. Instead, Pop art is focusses on mass culture, consumer society and popular, celebrity icons. 

The emergence of this movement occurred in stark contrast to Abstract Expressionism, another popular art trend at the time, conversely striving to dispossess the elite of their artistic exclusivity. Pop Art can manifest across painting, fashion and other mediums like sculpture, collage… Pop Art artists are presented with various options, and often take advantage of the limitless nature of this art form.

Characterized by specific visual and aesthetic criteria, Pop Art can be recognized by its various industrial processes, such as silk screening. This process involves using a stencil to copy the same image several times onto a canvas. Another notable element of Pop Art is the use of bright colors inspired by advertisements.

As art history reveals, the techniques and achievements of Pop Art were not held in high regard in its early days. They were even looked down on, mostly by the intellectual elite. It wasn't until the arrival of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the two pioneers of the movement, that Pop Art became (for lack of a better term) popular. 

After Warhol and Lichtenstein, contemporary painting was completely transformed: an artwork's value no longer contingent on rarity or on the subject it depicted.

The two artists were supposedly influenced by the European Avant-Garde Artists exhibition that took place in New York, from 1960 to 61. That same year, they produced a collection of comic book-inspired works, including Lichtenstein's famous piece Look Mickey. However, their styles quickly evolved and they both went in rather different artistic directions.

Whereas Roy Lichtenstein continued to work with comics strips, making them entirely his own, Andy Warhol paved the way for post-modern contemporary art, using daily objects as his source of inspiration.

Having begun his career in advertising, Warhol broke free as an artist to reimagine American traditions and everyday items, making them seem out of the ordinary– extraordinary even. Campbell's Soup, Coca-Cola cans and Heinz Ketchup are just a few examples of his muses.

Pop Art's strong and somewhat sarcastic critique of consumer society included the representations of celebrities, actors and singers. Many of them had achieved idol status and cultish devotion. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor... the biggest stars in the 60s were immortalized by Warhol's bold colors and styles and rather kitsch-advertising style.

Similarly to Duchamp's Dadaism, Pop Art wanted to deconsecrate art or, at the very least, change our perception of it. Art became accessible to ordinary people, using symbols and objects that people were already familiar with.

Discover our collection of Pop Art prints, which includes some of the biggest names in contemporary art such as Andy Warhol and David Hockney, as well as Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami, Keith Haring, and works by emerging artists.

Collector’s Guide: Collecting Prints