Brushstrokes

Medium: Screenprint on off-white wove paper
Year: 1967
Image: 21 7/8 x 29 7/8 inches (55.5 x 75.9 cm)
Sheet: 23 x 30 7/8 inches (58.5 x 78.4 cm)
Edition: 300
Artist’s Proofs: Unknown
Publisher: Leo Castelli Gallery for the Pasadena Art Museum, California
Literature: Corlett 45

Roy Lichtenstein Catalogue Raisonne: RLCR 1293

Brushstrokes, 1967 (RLCR 1293) | Catalogue entry | Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné

Signed and numbered in pencil

The image was designed for the Pasadena Art Museum’s 1967 Lichtenstein exhibition (1967 Pasadena, Calif., Pasadena Art Museum) and was also produced as a poster. Aetna Silkscreen Products, operated by Jack Golden in New York, is listed as the printer in the Pasadena Art Museum records. It is possible that Aetna Silkscreen Products prepared the screens only and did not do the actual printing.

“Like Andy Warhol’s soup-cans, Lichtenstein’s brushstrokes were, clearly and at first glance, generational icons. They proposed a critique of the immediate past, clearly intending to supersede it without destroying it—to propose something new that would renew the past, as well.”

(Dave Hickey, “Brushstrokes”, from Brushstrokes: Four Decades, New York, 2002, p. 10)

Brushstrokes was created for Roy Lichtenstein’s 1967 exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. The artist created a series of brushstroke works as a satirical response to the emotion-laden gestural paintings of the dominant Abstract Expressionists. Lichtenstein was interested in creating an image of brushstrokes that looked as though they had been rendered by a commercial artist. The print’s composition is wonderfully formal, floating the reinterpreted painter’s brushstrokes on top of a blue Ben Day dot background. The artist now depersonalized the idea of painting as an action and took back the brushstroke as part of his own personal expression through printmaking.

A crucial paradox of Lichtenstein’s engagement with the brushstroke motif is that he portrayed the ultimate symbol of self-expression in a style that seems to completely efface the presence of the author. Rather than showing the artist’s hand, he would defer representation to the ubiquitous and recognizable lexicon of graphic fiction. Brushstroke is a paradigmatic example of how Lichtenstein parodied the expressive mark-making and bravura application of paint that had long dominated American painting in the 1950s.

“Visible brushstrokes in a painting convey a sense of grand gesture. But, in my hands, the brushstroke becomes a depiction of a grand gesture. So the contradiction between what I’m portraying and how I am portraying it is sharp.”

Long revered as a spiritualistic embodiment of the creative moment, when Lichtenstein thematised the Brushstroke in the mid 1960s he represented common gestures from action painting – the splatters of Jackson Pollock or the raw unblended marks of Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline – with the thick black outlines and block primary colors. In his distinctive comic book style, actual brushstrokes that composed images of brushstrokes remained invisible.

 

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Auction Market Overview

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2026 Auction Results

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Sotheby’s London: 5 March 2026
Estimated: GBP 15,000 – 20,000
GBP 19,200 / USD 25,650

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Brushstrokes (Corlett 45), 1967
Screenprint in colors on off-white wove paper
Signed in pencil and numbered 264/300 (lower right)
Published by Leo Castelli Gallery for the Pasadena Art Museum

 

 

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2023 Auction Results

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Brushstrokes (1967) sold 5 times at auction in 2023 for a total of USD 183,059, at an average price of USD 36,612. It sold for its highest price of USD 50,800 at Phillips in New-York on 21 June 2023.

 

Phillips online: 13 September 2023
Estimated: USD 12,000 – 18,000
USD 25,400

Artnet Auctions: 13 July 2023
Estimated: USD 15,000 – 20,000
USD 30,000

ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Brushstrokes, 1967
Screen-print in colors on off-white wove paper
Signed and numbered 110/300 in pencil

Phillips New-York: 21 June 2023
Estimated: USD 10,000 – 15,000
USD 50,800
AUCTION RECORD FOR BRUSHSTROKES

ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Brushstrokes (C. 45), 1967
Screen-print in colors
Signed in pencil and numbered 29/300

Christie’s New-York: 19 April 2023
Estimated: USD 15,000 – 20,000
USD 40,320

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Brushstrokes, 1967
Screen-print in colors, on wove paper
Signed in pencil, numbered 93/300

 

 

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2022 Auction Results

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Brushstrokes (1967) sold twice at auction in 2022 for a total of USD 59,256, at an average price of USD 29,628. It sold for its highest price of USD 32,760 at Sotheby’s in New-York on 28 October 2022.

Sotheby’s New-York: 28 October 2022
Estimated: USD 12,000 – 18,000
USD 32,760

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Brushstrokes, 1967
Screen-print on off-white wove paper
Signed in pencil
Proof aside from the numbered edition of 300 plus an unknown number of artist’s proofs

Sotheby’s Paris: 9 March 2022
Estimated: EUR 10,000 – 15,000
EUR 23,940 / USD 26,320

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Brushstrokes (Corlett 45), 1967
Screen-print in colors
Signed and numbered 245/300

 

 

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2021 Auction Results

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Sotheby’s New-York: 10 December 2021
Estimated: USD 12,000 – 18,000
USD 30,240

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923 – 1997)
Brushstrokes (Corlett 45), 1967
Screen-print in colors
Signed in pencil and numbered 152/300