Pop art

What is pop art?

Pop art is a movement that raises the everyday world around us to the status of a subject: advertising, consumerism, comics and the faces of celebrities. Instead of lofty subjects it takes a soup can or a film star and looks at them as seriously as earlier painters looked at a landscape or a portrait. Isn't it rather refreshing when a gallery fills with pictures you know from daily life?

When and how did it come about?

Pop art came fully into its own in the 1960s as a response to the growing world of consumerism, advertising and mass culture. Artists began taking images from advertising posters, newspaper comics and product packaging and reworking them into independent artworks. It was a way of getting clear about what consumer society surrounds us with.

Who are its most important figures?

The best-known name of the movement is without doubt Andy Warhol, with his portraits of celebrities and pictures of consumer goods. Alongside him, key artists include Roy Lichtenstein, famed for canvases inspired by comics, and Richard Hamilton, whom many consider one of the fathers of pop art. Together they gave the movement its unmistakable visual language.

How does it do on the art market, and is it worth collecting?

Pop art is among the most sought-after segments of the art market, and names such as Warhol and Lichtenstein are fixtures of leading auctions. This is art that is at once immediately legible and historically significant, which secures it lasting interest from collectors. That combination of clarity and prestige is what makes pop art such a rewarding chapter of post-war art.

— Anna Pulkertová, founder of Art Part Club