Pop art arose in the 1950s in England and the USA, and in the 1960s developed into an artistic movement of international significance.
In their art, the pop-artists turned towards the banal objects of everyday life and to the consumerist items (adverts, comics, trivia magazines) of mass society. They ironically underscored the contents of modern people’s lives. Drawing on Dadaist techniques and intentions, they demanded that art should manifestly incorporate itself into the sociological context of the modern Zeitgeist. Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann radicalised the initial tendencies by using the techniques and effects of advertising graphics and elevating images from the mass media to iconic image panels and serially varying them. Pop art also inspired product design. Its motifs and intrinsic playfulness are for example reflected in the work of De Pas, D´Urbino, Lomazzi, Ettore Sottsass, Elio Fiorucci, and Peter Murdoch.
