Pyramids
Medium: Lithograph in colors on Arches wove paper
Year: 1969
Image: 11 9/16 x 35 inches (29.4 x 88.9 cm)
Sheet: 16 1/2 x 38 7/8 inches (41.9 x 98.8 cm)
Edition: 101
Artist’s Proofs: Unknown number
Publisher: The artist for the Print Collectors of the Friends of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Printer: Atelier Mourlot, New York
Literature: Corlett 87
Signed, dated and numbered in pencil
Pyramids is a rare and important work from a significant series within Roy Lichtenstein’s practice. Created between 1968 and 1969, the Pyramid paintings show Lichtenstein at his most rarefied and refined: more angular and elegant than his comic book tableaux of earlier years; more conceptual and chic than his graphic images of Pop art icons. In these works, the artist marched in step with the Minimalist movement that was sweeping the contemporary art world, and created works that were notably aligned with certain aspects of their stripped-back facture.
Pyramids, 1968
Sotheby’s London: 5 October 2018
Estimated: GBP 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
GBP 2,530,000 / USD 3,318,600
(#46) ROY LICHTENSTEIN | Pyramids
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Pyramids, 1968
Oil and Magna on canvas
36 x 60 1/4 inches (91.5 x 153 cm)
Signed and dated ’68 on the reverse
Pyramids is the first work in a six-part series, the only one to be completed in 1968, and one of only three to remain in private hands: the others are held in such prestigious private collections as the Kunsthaus Zurich, the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, and the Rhode Island School of Design. This work is a noble example of Lichtenstein’s oeuvre: impressive in scale, exact in design, and delineated with liberal application of the Ben-Day dot for which this artist became an icon of the Pop era. By the late 1960s, Minimalism was at its zenith in the New York art world. Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, and Sol Lewitt dominated the discourse with their enticing brand of conceptualism and austere elegant forms. Thus, after years of high-key super-saturated paintings of massive graphic impact and overwhelming Pop art impetus, Lichtenstein tuned into the minimalist discourse. He turned to series like the Stretcher Bars, which riffed on monochrome painting, recreating canvas versos upon their rectos in his trademark graphic style, and also began the Pyramids: sophisticated paintings and an experimental series of sculptures in which geometric forms and angular planes became the defining feature. In comparison to his earlier works they feel crisp in design, cool in execution, bold in palette, and even pseudo-abstract in form. Lichtenstein did not turn to the pyramidal form at random. Pyramids were popular amongst the 1960s minimalists; a shape that a number of them called upon. Like Flavin, Lichtenstein was working in a representational manner in Pyramids; his shapes are not just exercises in abstract geometry, but rather, with yellow monochromatic ground and grisaille shadow and sky, they are graphic reductions of architectonic landscapes. In this regard, Lichtenstein can be seen as one of a number of artists in the Twentieth Century who have called upon the Pyramids as subject matter.
Pyramids is on one level an exemplar of Roy Lichtenstein’s 1960s praxis: a bold, graphic depiction of an instantly recognizable subject, executed in bright color that evokes the aesthetic of popular comic books. Yet, in other respects, it represents a dramatic progression within his style; a move towards a more sophisticated, even academic approach to art, where formal qualities are valued on the same level as poetic meaning. It is a work of dramatic immediacy that is immediately recognisable as Lichtenstein.
Auction Results
Estimated: USD 12,000 – 16,000
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered ‘A/P V’
An artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 101
Wright Chicago: 18 December 2024
Estimated: USD 8,000 – 12,000
USD 11,340
ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923–1997)
Pyramids (Corlett 87), 1969
Screenprint in colors
Signed, dated, numbered and inscribed to lower margin ‘A/P V To Ted rf Lichtenstein ’69’
This work is artist’s proof 5 apart from the edition of 101
Doyle New-York: 30 April 2024
Estimated: USD 7,000 – 10,000
USD 12,160
ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
PYRAMIDS (CORLETT 87), 1969
Color lithograph on Arches paper
Signed, dated and numbered 83/101 in pencil
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Forum Auctions: 24 March 2020
Estimated: GBP 8,000 – 12,000
GBP 9,180 / USD 10,800
ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997)
Pyramids (Corlett 87), 1969
Lithograph printed in colors on Arches paper
A fine, fresh impression
Signed and dated in pencil from an edition of 101
XXXXXXXXXX
Sotheby’s New-York: 22 October 2018
Estimated: USD 7,000 – 10,000
USD 20,000
AUCTION RECORD FOR PYRAMIDS
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Pyramids (C. 87), 1969
Lithograph printed in yellow and black
Signed in pencil, dated and numbered 13/101