Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol was an American Pop artist known for transforming consumer products, celebrities, and mass-media photographs into paintings and repeated screen-printed images.
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
Compare Pop Art's origins, subjects, printing-inspired methods, and materials through short, painting-focused facts rather than a general history.
| Origins | Britain in the 1950s; later prominent in the United States |
|---|---|
| Approximate period | 1950s–1960s |
| Defining characteristics | Recognizable consumer imagery, bold graphics, repeated motifs, and commercial-printing effects |
| Common subjects | Advertisements, consumer products, comic books, celebrities, and mass media |
| Painting methods | Flat color, hard outlines, stenciling, and screenprinting for some artists |
| Paint types | Acrylic paint, oil paint, and other media depending on the artist |
| Other media | Printmaking, collage, sculpture, and photography |
| Representative works | Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl |
Sources: MoMA: Pop Art, National Galleries of Scotland, and The Met: Pop Art.
Famous Pop Art painters
Explore three painters associated with Pop Art, from Warhol's repeated celebrity images to Lichtenstein's comics and Hockney's early British work.
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was an American Pop artist known for adapting comic-book and advertising imagery into paintings using bold outlines, flat color, and patterns inspired by commercial printing.
David Hockney
David Hockney was a British artist known for portraits, landscapes, California swimming-pool scenes, and work across painting, printmaking, photography, and digital drawing.
See also: National Portrait Gallery: David Hockney and British Pop Art.
Related painting movements
Pop Art shared the 1960s with Op Art but focused on popular imagery rather than optical effects, while rejecting much Abstract Expressionist abstraction.
| Movement | How it differs |
|---|---|
| Op Art | Explores optical effects with abstract geometry and contrasting colors rather than imagery from consumer culture. |
| Abstract Expressionism | Emphasizes expressive abstraction and individual gesture rather than borrowed mass-media images and commercial techniques. |
Sources: MoMA: Op Art and MoMA: Pop Art.