Pop art artists had a huge impact on how we see art today, and on the development of graphic design too. Often creating brash, bold, colourful and humorous artwork, they combined different styles of painting, sculpture, collage and street art.
The pop art movement emerged in the mid 1950s and reflected on themes like the rise of mass production, celebrity and the expanding media and advertising industries. The most famous pop art artists would challenge the traditions of fine art and shape a new cultural identity. Here, we celebrate 14 of artists who defined the movement (see our pick of the best art supplies if you're inspired).
The most influential pop art artists
01. Eduardo Paolozzi
We'll start our list of the most famous pop art artists with the man who is often credited with establishing the movement. The Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzis may not be a household name like Andy Warhol (see below), but he set the movement in motion with his 1947 collage I was a Rich Man's Plaything (above), which is where the word "pop" first appeared in relation with art.
After establishing Hammer Prints, a design company producing wallpapers, he became a founder of the Independent Group in 1952 and became known for working in a wide range of media. In the 1960s, he would expand the limits of silkscreen printing in pieces that packed in references to pop culture and technology. He also designed mosaics for Tottenham Court Road Station in London.
02. Keith Haring
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Keith Harring belonged to a later generation of pop art artists. He began creating pop art after leaving college in 1978, but he was also heavily influenced by New York City graffiti subculture. He became known for spontaneous drawings on the subways, including chalk outlines of human figures and dogs on advertising spaces.
He would develop his own visual language of motifs, and was commissioned to create large public murals. He was also known for incorporating social activism, including anti-apartheid and safe sex messages.
03. Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggenare are well known for bringing pop art to the masses, by enlarging every day objects and placing them on top of buildings and in the middle of parks, the team "We want to communicate with the public but on our own terms, even if the images are stereotypical," Oldenburg explains.
"Our dialogue, which leads to the definition of a project, may take place anywhere, but we usually make decisions in our studio where we are surrounded by objects, models, notes, and drawings from the recent past and present, stimulated, whenever possible, by recollected observations of a site."
04. Robert Raucshenberg
Robert Rauschenberg is often considered to have preempted the pop art movement with his early works. In his 'Combines' collages starting in the mid-1950s, he used non-traditional materials and objects in innovative combinations.
Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines often blurred the line between the two disciplines. He also worked with photography, printmaking and performance, Rauschenberg was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993. He passed away in 2008.
05. Richard Hamilton
Regarded by many as the father of British pop art, Richard Hamilton created a series of renowned works during the 1950s and 60s. Probably his most famous is his 1956 collage, 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?'
Created for This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, it's like the ultimate catalogue of pop art influences, including references to newspapers, comics, advertising, applicances, food, packaging, television and the movies.
06. Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is best known for dots – lots of them. The Japanese pop art artist transcended the pop art movement and also took influences from surrealism, art brut, minimalism and abstract expressionism, often employing repetitive patterns as a way to eliminate intrusive thoughts and deal with mental illness.
She expanded pop art beyond canvas and sculpture with her happenings and installations. One notable event in the 1960s saw naked participants painted with brightly coloured polka dots, the motif she would become most known for. Her fame declined after she moved from New York back to Japan but enjoyed a revival after her 1993 Venice Biennale installation in which she resided in a mirrored room full of small pumpkin sculptures.
07. Roy Lichtenstein
Born in 1923 in New York, Lichtenstein became a leading figure in the pop art movement. His paintings of comic strip cartoons, washing machines and baked potatoes are now considered classics of that era.
Based on an image from 1962 issue of DC Comics’ All-American Men of War, Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam! (1963) is widely regarded as his most important and influential piece. The vibrant. diptych image depicts a fighter aircraft firing a rocket, with a red-and-yellow explosion in the background.
08. Peter Blake
At first glance, On the Balcony (above) looks like a collage but it is, in fact, a painting, It illustrates how Peter Blake, one of the most famous British Pop Artists of the 1950s, blended the themes of the movement with fine art,
Blake's paintings often incorporated imagery from advertisements and collaged elements. He also co-created the sleeve design for the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the covers for two of The Who's albums and the Live Aid concert poster.
09. Evelyne Axell
Evelyne Axell was one of the most influential female pop art artists and one of the few Belgian artists in the movement. She made provocative paintings focused on female sexuality, and used a process that involved cutting silhouettes of women from plastic sheeting and then applying vibrant enamel paint to their faces and bodies.
She had a career as an actress before starting to paint full time from 1964. She took lessons from the surrealist René Magritte. Her breakthrough series was Erotomobile (1964–66), which comprised images of nude women alongside with automobile parts. Evelyne has been compared with revolutionary female artists like Yayoi Kusama and the French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle.
10. Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is probably the most famous pop art artist today thanks to his prints of celebrities and branded products. It was in the early 1960s that he began to experiment with reproductions based on mass-produced images from popular culture such as Campbell's soup tins and Coca Cola bottles.
In 1962, four months after the death of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol created several mass-produced images of the actress, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagra. Arguably his most famous artwork, the repetition of the image was representative of the actress's presence in the media. The diptych print featured the portraits in vibrant colours and fading black and white, symbolising her the cult of a celebrity and her death. Warhol went on to give a similar treatment to celebrities such as Jackie Kennedy and Elvis Presley.
11. David Hockney
British artist David Hockney is most often associated with sun-drenched landscape paintings, which he created while living and working in LA from 1963 to 2005. But his early work, which featured a somewhat humorous mood, vivid colour and made use of magazine-style images, quickly gained him a reputation as a leading practitioner of pop art.
Developing his style, in the 1980s Hockey began to produce photocollages, initially using Polaroid prints and later of 35mm colour prints. Hockney's diverse skills include printmaking, painting, drawing, filmmaking and theater design.
12. James Rosenquist
The American pop art artist James Rosenquist made large works, often collages of elements from advertising and consumer culture. He drew on his background in sign painting and commercial art to explore the role of advertising and consumer culture, depicting popular cultural icons and mundane everyday objects. His work as a billboard painter may also have influenced the size of his pieces.
These themes often Rosenquist's works to be compared with those of the likes of Andy Warhol, but Rosenquist also used elements of surrealism, including fragments of advertisements or apparently random objects in uncanny juxtapositions to convey the overwhelming nature of mass media.
13. Robert Indiana
Robert Indiana is known for his bold, graphic typography, particularly his "LOVE" image, which began as a personal card, which he sent to friends and acquaintances in 1964. One year later, he submitted variations using oil on canvas for the Museum of Modern Art's annual Christmas card. The museum went with the most intense color combination of red, blue, and green, and the card was a huge hit
In 1966, Indiana worked with Marian Goodman of Multiples, Inc. to make a LOVE sculpture in aluminum, and in 1970, he completed his first monumental LOVE sculpture in Cor-Ten steel. The sculpture has also been recreated in other languages. Indiana also made bold works using other short, simple words, including EAT, DIE, HUG and ERR, exploring the power of language and drawing on vernacular highway signs.
14. Kiki Kogelnik
The Austrian painter and sculptor Kiki Kogelnik may be a less famous pop artist, but her striking compositions were highly influential with their flat graphic geometries and vibrant color palettes. She often represented the human form in her pieces, including her Womans Lib, series of self portraits with enormous scissors, cut-outs beneath her feet.
Her Hanging series of vinyl silhouettes (traced from the outlines of friends, such as Lichtenstein and Oldenburg) draped over clothes hangers were intended as a commentary on the fluidity of identity.
For more artistic inspiration, see our pick of the best art books. We also have a guide to famous graphic designers.
