Girl with Hair Ribbon by Roy Lichtenstein

In 1961, art dealer Leo Castelli started displaying Lichtenstein's work at his gallery in New York. Lichtenstein had his first one-man show at the Castelli gallery in 1962; the entire collection was bought by influential collectors before the show even opened.

Girl with Hair Ribbon was created in 1965, and it was at this time that Lichtenstein began to find fame not just in America but worldwide. He moved back to New York to be at the center of the art scene and resigned from Rutgers University in 1964 to concentrate on his painting. Lichtenstein used oil and Magna (early acrylic) paint in his best known works, such as Girl with Hair Ribbon, and Drowning Girl.

Of his own work Lichtenstein would say that the Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning "put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the color positions and sizes. My style looks completely different, but the nature of putting down lines pretty much is the same; mine just don't come out looking calligraphic, like Pollock's or Kline's." .