Printmaking is fundamental to Roy Lichtenstein’s visual language with over 350 prints in his oeuvre, creating such an impact that his practice brought upon “the renaissance of American printmaking,” according to curator Deborah Wye.ⁱ View from the Window, created in 1980, is one of seven prints from his Landscapes series. The series allowed Lichtenstein to revisit the brushstroke motif and reengage with abstraction, the first visual modality he first explored before becoming synonymous with Pop. The works in this series are characterized by the combination of “cartoon” and “real” brushstrokes to create and reinterpret scenes both from art history and his imagination.

“Visible brushstrokes in a painting convey a sense of grand gesture; but in my hands, the brushstroke becomes a depiction of a grand gesture.” 

—Roy Lichtenstein

Lichtenstein first started working with the landscapes in the 1960s at the beginning of his meteoric rise in Pop. It became a subject he would return to throughout his career, serving as milestones in his development as he continued experimenting with techniques and mediums. His Landscapes series, published by Gemini G.E.L. in 1985, not only instigated Lichtenstein to reengage the themes of his early work, but to further contemplate art historical movements from a new vantage point, such as Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism; for the series, he often found source imagery in historically important paintings, rather than from comic book scenes.ⁱⁱ Many works in this series reference a masterpiece by world-renowned artists, like Vincent van Gogh and Willem de Kooning. View from the Window directly references Max Beckmann’s 1928 painting of a Dutch seaside, Evening on the Terrace, but his insertion of gestural brushstrokes makes the real-world dialogue between art historical contexts undeniable in his Pop reinterpretation.

ⁱ Deborah Wye, Artists and Prints: Masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p. 168.
ⁱⁱ Ibid.