Bank of America Merrill Lynch to be global sponsor of Tate Modern's Lichtenstein:
A Retrospective

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the global sponsor of Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, described by Tate Modern as "the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to foremost Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein".

The exhibition will run from 21st February to 27th May, 2013.

Staged by Tate Modern, co-organisers with The Art Institute of Chicago, this will be the first major Lichtenstein retrospective for twenty years, bringing together 125 of the artist's most definitive paintings and sculptures. Built on new research and scholarship, the exhibition will reassess Lichtenstein's work and his enduring legacy.

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) is one of the central figures of American Pop Art. In the early 1960s he pioneered a new style of painting, executed by hand but inspired by industrial printing processes. He became renowned for works based on comic strips and advertising imagery, coloured with his signature hand-painted Benday dots, as an ongoing examination of representation and originality in mass media culture.

This exhibition will showcase such key paintings as Look Mickey 1961 (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Whaam! 1963 (Tate), Drowning Girl 1963 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and his monumental Artist's Studio series of 1973-4. The artist's rich and expansive practice will be represented by a wide range of materials, including paintings using Rowlux and steel, as well as sculptures in ceramic and brass and a selection of previously unseen drawings, collages and works on paper.

Alongside classic paintings of romantic heroines and scenes of war for which Lichtenstein is well known, the exhibition will show other early Pop works, such as images of everyday objects in black and white. Also on display will be the full scope of Lichtenstein's artistic explorations depicting landscapes, mirrors and so-called 'perfect' and 'imperfect' paintings.

It will also highlight Lichtenstein's engagement with art history, revealing his lesser-known responses to Futurism, Surrealism and German Expressionism. In the final years of his life, the artist went on to create a series of huge female nudes and sublime Chinese landscapes, neither of which have previously been shown within the wider context of his oeuvre.

The exhibition will receive additional support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Henry Luce Foundation and The Lichtenstein Exhibition Supporters Group.