Famous Pop Art Artists

Andy Warhol

American artist Andy Warhol is among the most revered and famous pop art creators. He has created artwork using iconic portrait subjects like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. His work spans various mediums among them photography, painting, silkscreening, film, and sculpture.

Best known artworks:

Campbell's Soup Cans 1962

This is an iconic American pop art piece that consists of 32 hand-painted canvases of mass-produced soup cans. The bottom edge of each can features a hand-stamped fleur de lis pattern and you can read the flavor of the soup on every label.

Marilyn Diptych 1962

The artist created this pop art creation shortly after the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 from a publicity photo for the movie "Niagara". He used silkscreen ink and acrylic paint on two canvases.

Roy Lichtenstein

American artist Roy Lichtenstein was a founder of the Pop Art Movement. He often referenced popular culture, including comic strips and cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse.

The artist often referenced popular culture, including comic strips and cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse. The medium he favored was Ben-Day dots used in newspapers and comic strips.

Best known artworks:

Drowning Girl 1963

The artist sampled the image from the #83 issue of Secret Hearts. This was aq comic book illustrated by Tony Abruzzo. Lichtenstein altered the picture slights, removed some background elements, and changed the caption.

Whaam! 1963

Lichtenstein painted this pop art piece in a comic strip composition on two canvases. One depicts a fighter jet and the other an enemy plane.

He used a common machine-printed comic book style — areas of primary color, outlined in black. Again, Lichtenstein sampled a work of a DC comic book, issue #89 of All-American Men of Way, drawn by Irv Novick.

Keith Haring

American artist Keith Haring is known for his animated imagery of figures and symbols. He got his inspiration from graffiti and street art. The artist began drawing in the subway stations of New York City. His artwork focuses on social issues.

Best known artworks:

Radiant Baby 1990

This is an iconic pop art piece depicting a bright orange baby with a black outline crawling on their hands and knees. The artist said the baby represented youthful innocence and the black line radiating from the baby convey a sense of life and energy.

Crack Is Wack 1986

Haring painted the iconic bright orange and black street art near the Harlem River Drive in East Harlem in New York City on an abandoned handball court wall. The pop art piece has variation on both sides of the concrete wall.

Claes Oldenberg

Swedish American pop art master Claes Oldenberg is known for turning the ordinary into something extraordinary. The "soft sculptures" of diner food, mass culture and cheap clothing the artist created in the 1960s are looked at today as the first sculptural expressions of pop art.

Best known artworks:

Spoonbridge and Cherry 1985

This a the artist's famous pop art sculpture of a giant spoon and cherry. It can be seen at the Walker Art Center’s Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in Minnesota. The sculpture sits in a small pond with a water fountain.

Cupid’s Span 2002

This artwork is located in Rincon Park on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California.

It is a 60-foot-tall fiberglass and steel sculpture inspired by the city's reputation as the home port of Eros. The taut bowstring refers to the most famous San Francisco land mark - the Golden Gate Bridge.

Richard Hamilton

English artist Richard Hamilton was one of the founders of the Pop Art Movement. The artist stated that pop art was “popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and big business.”

Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? 1956

This pop art piece was based on a small collage from 1956 - This is Tomorrow and is composed of images clipped from magazines. In 2004 the artist created an "upgraded" version on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Jeff Koons

American artist Jeff Koons is known for reproducing commercial images and objects with minor modifications among them inflatable pool toys and balloon animals in polished, colored stainless steel.

Balloon Dogs 1994

The artist created a series of sculptures as part of his Celebration series, The collection is comprised of 20 large-scale sculptures and 15 oil paintings with the aim to bring up childhood nostalgia and memories of celebration.

Each sculpture is in the form of a balloon twisted into a dog shape, but the scale of the stainless steel sculptures are exaggerated.

Balloon Dog Orange (1994-2000) sold for $58.4 million in a 2013 Christies’ auction. The sale set the record for the most expensive artwork sold by a living artist in an auction.