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Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), one of the foremost Pop artists, rarely found himself without admirers. Andy Warhol, another leading figure of the movement, was so impressed by his work that he abandoned his own experiments with images of superheroes taken from comic books. As Warhol told curator Henry Geldzahler, “Roy was doing comics so well.”
Lichtenstein’s distinctive style, with its bold contours and Ben-Day dots, has made him one of the most valuable Pop artists on the market. His highest price came in a private sale in 2017, when hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen paid a reported $165 million for Masterpiece (1962), formerly owned by Agnes Gund. (Gund subsequently used the proceeds to establish the Art for Justice Fund, supporting criminal-justice reform through the arts.) At auction, however, Lichtenstein’s record stands at $95.4 million for Nurse (1964), sold at Christie’s in 2015. His top public sales span the whole of his career—from comic-book heroines and intimate scenes to his later explorations of the nude and the act of painting itself.
Below, a list of the artist’s top public sales.
The 1965–66 “Brushstroke” series comprises just 15 canvases. In these works, Lichtenstein recast the spontaneous brushstroke associated with Abstract Expressionism as a graphic sign, questioning how gesture, style, and authorship are communicated in painting. The white strokes, black outlines, and comic-book vocabulary turn an apparently spontaneous act of painting into a carefully constructed image. The series marked a pivotal moment in Lichtenstein’s career-long exploration of “art about art.”
White Brushstroke I was first exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1965 and was acquired that year by Irving Blum, founder of the Ferus Gallery. After remaining in Blum’s collection for three decades, the painting was offered at Sotheby’s New York on June 29, 2020, with an estimate of $20–30 million. It sold for $25.4 million, comfortably within its presale estimate and making it one of Lichtenstein’s top 12 auction results.
Two sweeps of red and white appear against a field of Ben-Day dots, with drips and thick black contours that mimic the appearance of wet paint. This is an example of Lichtenstein’s “Brushstrokes” series, which alludes to the gestural mode of Abstract Expressionism that dominated the American art world at the time it was painted. In May 2017, Red and White Brushstrokes (1965) sold at Christie’s for $28.5 million, against a presale estimate of $25–35 million.
A man and woman are locked in a passionate embrace, their eyes closed. Behind them, a red ground punctuated by white and black rays gives the intimate scene an almost explosive intensity. Kiss III (1962) is part of Lichtenstein’s early comic-book paintings, where emotionally charged subjects such as love and war are rendered through the flat colors, heavy outlines, and Ben-Day dots of mass-market printing. The painting was completed in the year Lichtenstein held his inaugural solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, marking a pivotal moment in his emergence as a leading Pop artist.
The painting, which carried a $30–50 million estimate, sold for $31.1 million at Christie’s in 2019. The work was consigned by Robert B. and Beatrice C. Mayer, a Chicago couple known for their collection of American postwar art. While the final price landed near the low end of its estimate, it still placed Kiss III among Lichtenstein’s most valuable works sold at auction.
This reclining beauty is based on a character from the DC romance comic Heart Throbs, in the story “Love Me Not for Beauty Only,” in which a fashionable blonde is frustrated by unrequited love. Lichtenstein selected a frame of the woman alone in bed and translated it into Seductive Girl (1996), part of his late-career “Nudes” series, begun in 1993. Combining erotic imagery with the conventions of art history, the work came to auction for the first time at Christie’s New York in November 2013. It sold for $31.5 million, against an estimate of $22 million.
Though Lichtenstein cultivated his signature Ben-Day dot style throughout his career, he had largely ceased drawing from comic books for almost three decades when he produced Nude with Joyous Painting in 1994. Like Anxious Girl, his blonde protagonist comes from a 1960s DC Comics Girls’ Romance story, in which a bather named Gloria is rescued by a lifeguard. Lichtenstein transposed her from the beach to a domestic interior, bringing his heroine into one of art history’s oldest canons: the nude. The work also recalls earlier treatments of the genre by artists including Titian, Matisse, and Picasso.
In July 2020, Christie’s offered Nude with Joyous Painting (1994) as the cover lot of its “ONE” sale, the first major auction the house held following months of pandemic lockdown. Estimated at around $30 million, the work drew competitive bidding between Hong Kong and New York. Ultimately the phone bidder working with Christie’s Hong Kong specialist Francis Belin won the work for a hammer price of $40.5 million.
The Ring (Engagement) (1962) captures the instant of a marriage proposal through two tightly cropped hands, one placing a ring on the other’s fourth finger. Lichtenstein borrowed the scene from a comic book and enlarged it to monumental proportions, surrounding the ring with radiating red and yellow lines that give the intimate gesture the force of an explosion.
Chicago art collector and plastic industry mogul Stefan Edlis sold The Ring (Engagement) at Sotheby’s in New York in May 2015 (the same year he and his wife, Gael Neeson, donated $400 million worth of art to the Art Institute of Chicago). The painting was expected to sell for $50 million but eventually went for a below-estimate final price of $41.7 million. The result was hardly a loss for Edlis, who had acquired the work in 1997 for just $2.2 million.
Chicago art collector and plastic industry mogul Stefan Edlis sold The Ring (Engagement) at Sotheby’s in New York in May 2015—the same year he and his wife, Gael Neeson, donated $400 million worth of art to the Art Institute of Chicago. The Ring (1962) was expected to sell for $50 million, but eventually went for a below-estimate final price of $41.7 million. The disappointment was hardly a loss for Edlis, who had acquired the work in 1997 at auction for just $2.2 million.
The blue-eyed, red-haired woman clutching a telephone was adapted from a panel in DC Comics’ Secret Hearts, but Lichtenstein excluded surrounding details, leaving her crestfallen expression to carry the scene. Ohhh . . . Alright . . . (1964) belongs to the artist’s celebrated series of romance-comic paintings, which isolated moments of romantic anxiety from the predictable narratives of postwar love comics.
Estimated at around $40 million, the painting sold at Christie’s New York for $42.6 million in November 2010, setting a world auction record for Lichtenstein at the time. It had been owned by actor Steve Martin, among others.
Produced in 1961, I Can See the Whole Room . . . and There’s Nobody in It belongs to the crucial time early in his career when Lichtenstein moved from abstraction into comic imagery. The four-foot-square painting shows a cartoon man peering through a peephole into a stark black field, his face illuminated by a flash of yellow and accompanied by the oversize speech balloon that gives the work its title. Starting from a William Overgard Steve Roper cartoon, Lichtenstein cropped and radically simplified the original image.
The work was acquired early on by collectors Emily and Burton Tremaine and featured in the Whitney Museum’s 1983 Comic Art Show. It came to Christie’s New York, where it sold for $43.2 million in November 2011, landing solidly within its presale expectation of $35–45 million.
Sleeping Girl (1964) is a square, tightly cropped portrait of a blonde woman resting her head against a red pillow. Her sweeping yellow hair frames her face, while black outlines and regular Ben-Day dots give the image the mechanical precision of commercial printing. Lichtenstein based the figure on a DC Comics panel from the story “Don’t Kiss Me Again!”, making the teary-eyed blonde appear more enigmatic. By removing the tear and a supporting hand, he turned a crying heroine into a dozing one. In May 2012, the work sold for $44.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York, exceeding its presale estimate of $30 million.
Anxious Girl (1964) is one of Lichtenstein’s celebrated “Girl” paintings, made at the height of his breakthrough Pop period. The tightly cropped blonde figure, rendered in Ben-Day dots and bold graphic contours, was adapted from a 1963 DC Comics Girls’ Romances image by Tony Abruzzo. Lichtenstein omitted the two male suitors from the original composition and added a furrow between his subject’s eyes, amplifying her uneasy expression.
After more than 30 years in private hands, during which time it was never publicly exhibited, the work was offered at Christie’s New York on May 18, 2026. Estimated at $40–60 million, it sold for $46.06 million. The result made it Lichtenstein’s third-highest auction price.
It looks like a Picasso, but it’s not a Picasso. Painted in 1963, Woman with Flowered Hat is based on the Spanish master’s portrait of Dora Maar. Lichtenstein replaced Picasso’s fractured forms and expressive color with primary hues, crisp outlines, and, of course, Ben-Day dots, turning the dark-haired Maar into one of his familiar blue-eyed blondes. The significance of the work was quickly recognized, with appearances at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and major exhibitions and retrospectives in Pasadena, London, and New York.
The painting sold in May 2013 at Christie’s to collector Laurence Graff, who bid for the work himself in the New York salesroom against three other bidders. With a presale estimate of $30–40 million, it was hammered in at approximately $49.5 million.
Is this Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, or Jacqueline Kennedy? The woman in Roy Lichtenstein’s Nurse (1964) has the glamour of the female icons of his early-1960s paintings. Yet her striped uniform, stiff collar, and starched cap establish her more down-to-earth profession. Ben-Day dots, sharply defined features, and a flawless complexion give her the polished look of a movie star, while her direct gaze and anxious expression make her less comforting than the conventional image of a devoted nurse.
In November 2015, Christie’s sold Nurse for $95.4 million to a single bidder. Speculation arose that the buyer may have been Christie’s owner, François Pinault, acting as a third-party guarantor, but it has since been reported that the buyer was Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian. The painting was consigned by Boston collector Barbara Lee, who had bought it at Sotheby’s in May 1995 for $1.7 million. Its earlier collectors included Peter Brant, Karl Stroher, and Leon Kraushar, a Pop art lover who, in one photograph published by Life magazine, is seen posing near Nurse in his bedroom.