{"id":404591,"date":"2026-04-30T07:24:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T07:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/404591\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T07:24:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T07:24:24","slug":"the-quintessential-pop-portrait-roy-lichtensteins-anxious-girl-goes-up-for-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/404591\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The quintessential Pop portrait’: Roy Lichtenstein\u2019s Anxious Girl goes up for auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pioneering Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Anxious Girl’ painting, created in 1964 as part of his ‘Girls’ series, is heading for auction – and estimated to make up to $60 million (approximately \u20ac51 million). <\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

The painting, which depicts a distressed looking young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, was painted by Lichtenstein at the height of his career. <\/p>\n

It originally belonged to Horace and Holly Solomon, two art collectors and pivotal figures within the ’60s Pop movement, and then entered a private collection, disappearing for over 30 years from the public eye. <\/p>\n

It’s due to go under the hammer at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale in New York, United States, on the 18 May, marking a rare opportunity to own one of Lichtenstein’s most coveted pieces. <\/p>\n

\u201c’Anxious Girl’ is the quintessential Pop portrait, a veritable icon of twentieth century art,” Sara Friedlander from Christie’s said in a press release. <\/p>\n

“Compositionally, the painting showcases the artist’s singular ability to distill complex visual cues into three core elements – line, colour, and form – and formally employ them into conveying deep human emotion through timeless love stories and comic book-inspired imagery.” <\/p>\n

Lichtenstein’s works remain some of the world’s most sought-after examples of 20th-century art, with his 1962 painting ‘Masterpiece’ fetching a record-breaking $165 million (\u20ac141 million) at auction in 2017. <\/p>\n

Best known for his charismatic cartoon imagery and use of Ben-Day dots – a mechanical printing technique used in the production of comics – the American artist first began experimenting with Pop Art in 1961. <\/p>\n

His methods of lifting imagery from comic book strips led to him becoming a controversial figure, and sparked heated debate around the difference between plagiarism and artistic appropriation. <\/p>\n

The ‘Anxious Girl’ imagery comes from DC’s ‘Girls’ Romances’ anthology, titled ‘Too Much to Ask!’ <\/p>\n

In the original comic, she is depicted as a heroine stuck between choosing two potential lovers – although her face here does not bear the same forehead crease. <\/p>\n

Lichtenstein’s ‘Girls’ series is arguably his most recognisable, featuring women in various states of melodrama. This is the first time in over a decade that one of its images has gone to auction, with the last being ‘Nurse’, which sold at Christie’s in 2015 for $95 million (\u20ac81 million). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pioneering Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Anxious Girl’ painting, created in 1964 as part of his ‘Girls’ series, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1628,442,498,499,500,1978,208427,501,156,111,139,69,105883],"class_list":["post-404591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artist","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-auction","tag-comic-strips","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pop-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}