Aspen Winter Jazz Poster

Roy Lichtenstein was born into a musically inclined family and was raised during New York’s infamous jazz age of the 1930s. The influence of this era stayed with him throughout his career, having an initially subtle then quite direct impact on his creative output. The artist spent his adolescence frequenting jazz clubs, concert halls, and the Apollo Theatre in particular.

Lichtenstein’s Aspen Winter Jazz Poster from 1967 was commissioned by the Aspen Jazz Festival and pays a classic pop tribute to the freeform spirit of music. The artist utilises strident outlines and bright primary colours, reducing his portrayed saxophone player to essential shapes. Even so, Lichtenstein still manages to incorporate a musical soul. Similar rhythmic undertones can be detected in other series from the artist’s oeuvre, see the manner in which his Brushstrokes capture the act of paintingfor instance.

Music remained a great love for Lichtenstein as his career progressed and provided an inexhaustible well of subject matter for several of his iconic works. In his later years and up until his passing in 1997, Lichtenstein practiced mastering the saxophone himself. His Compositions from this period explored ways in which the spontaneous qualities of music could be translated onto a canvas using the means of commercial design.