From August 22, 2026, to March 14, 2027, the Kunstmuseum Basel in Basel presents “Roy Lichtenstein. Sweet Dreams, Baby!, a major exhibition dedicated to one of the leading figures of Pop Art. Curated by Fabienne Ruppen, the exhibition brings together over 50 prints created throughout the American artist’s career, many of which are being shown to the public for the first time. The exhibition was made possible by a significant donation from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, thanks to which the museum’s Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings) now houses one of the most important collections of Roy Lichtenstein’s graphic works outside the United States.
The exhibition aims to offer a comprehensive overview of Roy Lichtenstein’s artistic evolution, highlighting his significant contribution to the emergence of Pop Art in the 1960s. Through vibrant colors, comic-book-inspired compositions, and his unmistakable use of Ben-Day dots, the artist transformed images drawn from advertising, mass culture, and consumer products into the hallmarks of his art.
While Pop Art initially met with skepticism in the New York art scene, it was precisely the widespread distribution of printed works that fostered its success with the general public. The first posters and invitations created by Lichtenstein for exhibitions at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York—produced in large print runs at low cost—played a decisive role in the artist’s rise to fame.
The exhibition also traces the beginnings of his career as an engraver, featuring six works created between the late 1940s and early 1950s that document his early experiments with printmaking techniques. Beginning in the late 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein collaborated with some of the most prestigious printmaking studios in the United States, including Gemini Graphic Editions Limited, Tyler Graphics, and Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida. These collaborations gave rise to works of extraordinary technical complexity. Among the masterpieces on display, *Portrait* (1989) stands out; it was created through an eighteen-step printing process that combines lithography, woodcut, silkscreen, and a special wax-printing technique developed specifically for the project.
Over the course of his career, Lichtenstein produced over 350 graphic works, including silkscreen prints, etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and linocuts. To mark the centennial of the artist’s birth, celebrated in 2023, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated approximately one hundred prints to three prestigious European institutions: the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum in London, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. The Swiss museum received 33 works, which showcase the extraordinary variety of the artist’s printmaking. Among these are *Paper Plates* (1969), a personal reinterpretation of Vincent van Gogh’s *The Sower*, and the monumental *Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior* (1992).
The exhibition Roy Lichtenstein. Sweet Dreams, Baby! marks the first opportunity to view this significant donation in Basel. The exhibition is complemented by other works from the Kupferstichkabinett’s collection—which has been acquiring Lichtenstein’s works since the 1960s—as well as the famous paintings *Hopeless* (1963) and *Mirror #2* (1970), on permanent loan to the Kunstmuseum.
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| Roy Lichtenstein at the Kunstmuseum Basel: Over 50 prints on display, many of them being shown for the first time |
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