Woman in Bath by Roy Lichtenstein

Inspired by a romantic comic-strip, Woman in Bath features a basic range of primary colours—blue, yellow and red—applied using Lichtenstein’s characteristic Benday dot technique. The woman’s hands and face, outlined by thick black lines against a white background, stand out from the static geometry of the tiled wall behind her. Lichtenstein was one of the painters who abandoned the language of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s, giving rise to the Pop Art movement. Here, in his treatment of a subject often addressed in the history of art—in the form of The Bath of Venus—he succeeds in challenging appearances, replacing the mechanical reproduction of the cartoon by the manual work of the painter.