Name: New Seascape
Brand: Roy Lichtenstein
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Roy Lichtenstein’s New Seascape (signed) is estimated to be worth between £6,000 and £9,000. This screenprint, created in 1966, has shown consistent value growth and has an auction history of five sales since its entry to the market in July 2010. Over the past five years, the hammer price has ranged from £6,554 in December 2022 to £10,157 in September 2021, with an average annual growth rate of -4%. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 70.

Meaning & Analysis

Roy Lichtenstein’s devoted exploration into the formal qualities of the landscape genre spans thirty years of his career. The artist evolved his Landscapes, Moonscapes and Seascapes continuously, completing several individual editions as part of his extensive sequence.

New Seascape of 1966 transforms the art historical tradition of landscape painting into a brilliant superimposition of colours and shapes. The print exhibits a fuchsia and bright turquoise diffused imaginary seascape.The vibrant pigments constituting the skies in the upper half of the composition blend seamlessly with the similarly hued illustration of water below. This poignant work is unusual in its painterly attributes, making the beholder forget it was fabricated on plastic. New Seascape’s laminated disposition was later expanded in Lichtenstein’s subsequent Ten Landscapesportfolio.

This print is one of the first editioned pieces in which Lichtenstein used free-form Rowlex, a synthetic material with reflective properties, as his base. The prismatic industrial sheets evoke textural and spatial interplays, producing the effect of changing light and fluctuating movement. In no other adaptation of a genre was Lichtenstein as experimental with materials as he was in his landscape renditions. His quest to create optical illusions and plays on perception continued in his Mirrors and later Reflections series.

Roy Lichtenstein, born in New York, 1923, is a seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, renowned for his comic book and advertisement-inspired artworks. His transformative journey from classical painter to Pop Art pioneer began with his iconic piece, Look Mickey, marking the fusion of painting with pop culture. Lichtenstein’s works, including Whaam!, Drowning Girl, and Crying Girl, blend parody and satire, challenging the boundaries between popular culture and ‘high art’. With over 5,000 pieces to his name, Lichtenstein’s enduring influence resonates in contemporary art, his works celebrated in prestigious institutions worldwide.