Roy Lichtenstin - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1949 he married Isabel Wilson, who previously had been married to Ohio artist Michael Sarisky. However, the brutal upstate winters took a toll on Lichtenstein and his wife, after he began teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1958. The couple divorced in 1965.

He married his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, in 1968. From 1970 until his death, Lichtenstein split his time between Manhattan and a house near the beach in Southampton, New York.

Erika Wexler, daughter of Norman Wexler, was Lichtenstein's lover from 1991 to 1994, saying that she was the inspiration for his move into painting nudes and is shown in Large Interior with Three Reflections, Nude with Yellow Flower and Nudes With Beach Ball. She described the relationship for the first time in mid-February 2013, while seeking publicity for a new album of songs, and on the eve of a retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern gallery. She reported that Lichtenstein and his wife, Dorothy Herzka, "had his parallel thing with a lover or whatever and she had her thing. It worked for them. They had a lot of homes, which helps."

He died of pneumonia in 1997 at New York University Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for several weeks. He was survived by his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, and by his sons, David and Mitchell, from his first marriage.