Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism emerged in postwar New York, where painters used bold gestures, large canvases, and expansive color fields to convey emotion.
Painting Movement
Pop Art
Pop Art drew on advertising, comic books, celebrities, and everyday products, bringing mass-media imagery into painting in Britain and the United States.
Pop Art quick facts
Pop Art emerged in Britain and the United States, turning advertising, comics, consumer goods, and celebrities into bold, familiar subjects for painting.
| Origin | Britain, with later development in the United States |
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| Approximate period | 1950s–1960s |
| Classification | An international movement adapting commercial and mass-media imagery across painting and other arts. |
| Historical context | Advertising, television, consumer products, and mass production became widely shared visual reference points. |
| Common subjects | Advertisements, consumer products, comic books, celebrities, and mass media |
| Defining characteristics | Recognizable consumer imagery, bold graphics, repeated motifs, and commercial-printing effects |
| Paint types | Acrylic paint and metallic enamel paint in Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans; oil paint and acrylic paint in Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl. |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas for Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl. |
| Painting methods | Painters used flat color, hard outlines, hand-painted repetition, stamped details, and, in some later works, screenprinting. |
| Famous painters | Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and David Hockney |
| Representative works | Warhol's 32-panel Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl (1963) |
Sources: MoMA: Pop Art, National Galleries of Scotland, The Met: Pop Art, MoMA: Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, and MoMA: Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl.
Paint types in Pop Art
Pop artists mixed paint with commercial imagery, from Warhol’s acrylic and metallic enamel to Lichtenstein’s oil and acrylic canvases in distinct works.
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Acrylic paint
Andy Warhol used acrylic in Campbell's Soup Cans (1962), hand-painting 32 canvases that each depict a different flavor. Repeating familiar labels turned a mass-produced grocery item into a serial gallery work. MoMA records the acrylic in these painted canvases, distinct from Warhol's later screenprinted images.
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Enamel paint
MoMA identifies metallic enamel alongside acrylic in Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962). The series' repeated labels and stamped details evoke commercial printing, although the canvases were hand-painted. Enamel is documented as one component of this specific series, not as a universal Pop Art medium.
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Oil paint
Roy Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl (1963) uses both oil and acrylic on canvas. By enlarging a cropped romance-comic image, he transformed a familiar printed source into a painting while retaining its dramatic caption and Ben-Day dot language. MoMA identifies both paints for this particular work.
Sources: MoMA on Warhol's acrylic and metallic enamel Campbell's Soup Cans, MoMA on Lichtenstein's oil-and-acrylic Drowning Girl, and National Gallery of Art on Warhol's hand-painted works and later screenprinting.
Famous painters from Pop Art
Explore three painters associated with Pop Art, from Warhol's repeated celebrity images to Lichtenstein's comics and Hockney's early British work.
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Andy Warhol
Warhol moved consumer packaging and celebrity photographs into painting, repeating images so that color, cropping, and mechanical reproduction became part of the subject. His Campbell's Soup Cans shifted Pop Art toward serial presentation, while later screenprints made the process even more visible.
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Roy Lichtenstein
Lichtenstein enlarged the visual language of comic strips, translating speech balloons, bold outlines, and Ben-Day dots into carefully composed paintings. Drowning Girl turns a single panel into a monumental image, blurring distinctions between commercial printing and fine art.
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David Hockney
Hockney's paintings of California swimming pools use clear outlines, simplified architecture, and saturated color to make light and water feel graphic. His Pop-related work draws on everyday modern imagery, while his wider practice across portraiture, landscapes, and digital media resists a single style.
Sources: MoMA: Pop Art; National Galleries of Scotland; The Met: Pop Art; MoMA: Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans; MoMA: Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl.
Related painting movements
Pop Art challenged Abstract Expressionism's inward gesture; Op Art and Minimalism offered 1960s contrasts, while Photorealism pursued camera-based detail.
Op Art
Op Art gained prominence in the 1960s, using repeated geometry and sharp color contrasts to make still paintings appear to vibrate, move, or recede.
Photorealism
Photorealism emerged in the United States in the late 1960s, as painters used photographs to create precisely detailed images of everyday scenes.