The Pop Art movement began in the 1950s and produced a number of successful artists from the UK and the United States. Pop Art posters are still popular today. They can be bought with frames and look good in the home or in commercial properties. The artists took their inspiration from everyday objects and advertising. The pictures they produced influenced advertising campaigns, bringing it full circle. The reasoning was that it was just as valid to paint a coca cola bottle, for example, as a bowl of fruit in a still life.
The most famous artist in this genre was undoubtedly, Andy Warhol. 100 Cans from 1962 shows lines of Campbell's soup cans, one of his most enduring images. This poster is taken from an original painting, depicting 32 soup cans. Warhol was involved with the band, Velvet Underground and he designed one of their album covers. Banana (1966) was used by the band as a promotional poster. Warhol liked to portray iconic figures of the day, as in Double Elvis Aaron Presley (1963), a silk screen in which Elvis is shown in cowboy mode and is drawing a gun. Marilyn Monroe Silkscreen (1962) is one of many of the actress. Warhol also provides us with two Pop Art posters of revolutionary Che Guevara. Che Guevara (1962) shows nine different colored images and Che Guevara, Revolution shows Che in front of the Cuban flag.
British artist Peter Blake's most famous work is the cover of the Beatles' seminal album, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is available as a poster. I Got a Girl depicts earlier pop stars with images of Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Rydell and Elvis Presley. There is also a series of 'door' paintings. Girly Door is a red door with movie stars painted on it, including Marilyn Monroe and Sophie Loren. Marilyn's Door shows Monroe in front of a blue door. Blake also painted the actresses, Tuesday Weld and Kim Novak. Fine Art Bits is a tribute to some of Blake's heroes and depicts small reproductions of paintings by Gainsborough, Valaquez, Vermeer and Stanley Spencer.
Jasper Johns is famous for his many paintings of the Stars and Stripes flag and these are available as Pop Art posters. Flag 1954 was originally painted over a collage, made up of newspaper cuttings. The series also contains Three Flags 1958 and Flag 1954-55. Johns also liked to paint targets, as in Target 1974, a blue and yellow target on a red background. His passion for numbers is shown in Zero-Nine and 0 Through 9.
Roy Lichtenstein's paintings were reproductions of cartoon strips, made up of dots. He was fond of painting military jet aeroplanes and Whaam B shows a fighter jet on fire. Whaam A shows a fighter pilot with a speech bubble. Blam is another fighter jet on fire. He was also fond of depicting blond women with speech bubbles in the style of a romance comic book, as in Oh, Alright, showing a woman talking on thee phone.
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