Roy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Lemon and Glass, 1974, distills the timeless genre of still life into the crystalline vocabulary of Pop Art, rendering ordinary domestic objects with monumental clarity and intellectual precision. The composition, at once serene and electric, encapsulates Lichtenstein’s unique ability to bridge classical art history and the visual idioms of mass culture. Against a field of geometric order and unmodulated color, a lemon and a glass — archetypal symbols of freshness, fragility, and transience — are transfigured into icons of modernity, their contours defined by the artist’s hallmark black outlines and meticulously regimented Ben-Day dots.

Lichtenstein’s still lifes of the 1970s reveal a meditative refinement in his practice. Here, the lemon and glass are not simply representations of objects, but conceptual constructs — purified forms through which the artist interrogates vision, illusion, and the artificiality of pictorial space. The lemon, traditionally emblematic of sensory pleasure and impermanence, becomes an abstracted sphere of radiant yellow, devoid of tactile realism yet pulsing with graphic vitality. The transparent glass, a motif that has challenged painters for centuries, is reimagined as a network of flat planes and mechanical precision — an ironic inversion of illusionism that invites contemplation of how we see and what we believe to be real.

In this work, Lichtenstein masterfully marries irony with reverence. The lineage of Cézanne and Morandi hovers beneath the surface, yet their painterly intimacy is replaced by a cool, industrial polish. By transforming the contemplative quiet of the still life into a vibrant meditation on form, perception, and the mechanization of beauty, Lichtenstein elevates the banal to the iconic. Untitled (Still Life with Lemon and Glass) stands as both homage and critique — a luminous exploration of how art history itself can be reimagined through the disciplined geometry of the modern gaze.

Created in 1974, this Lichtenstein pop art screenprint in colors is hand-signed by Roy Lichtenstein (New York, 1923 – New York, 1997) in pencil: ‘rf Lichtenstein’.  Numbered from the edition of 100, this work is published by Original Editions, New York.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:

Roy Lichtenstein, Untitled (Still Life with Lemon and Glass), 1974 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the final sale of the work).

1. Corlett, Lee Mary. The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein A Catalogue Raisonee 1948-1997. Hudson Hills Press: New York, 1994. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 134 on pg. 138.
2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this work.

About the Framing:

Roy Lichtenstein, Untitled (Still Life with Lemon and Glass), 1974 is framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.