Name: Bull VI
Brand: Roy Lichtenstein
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

Roy Lichtenstein's Bull VI (signed), a mixed media artwork from 1973, is estimated to be worth between £9,500 and £14,000. This piece has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 6%. Over the past 12 months, the average selling price was £7,540, across 4 total sales. In the last five years, the hammer price has ranged from £5,002 in September 2024 to £12,080 in April 2025. Since its first sale in November 2007, Bull VI has been sold 9 times, demonstrating its popularity among collectors. This work is part of a limited edition of 100.

Meaning & Analysis

Roy Lichtenstein’s Bulls series from 1973 is an exploration of art forms and printing techniques in transformation. In this series, Lichtenstein draws primarily on Theo van Doesburg’s pencil studies, The Cow (1916-17), and Pablo Picasso’s lithographs, The Bull (1945-46). Lichtenstein’s Bull Profile series is a gentle parody of their visual search for true form, presumed to be achievable through abstraction.

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In this final impression of the bull the composition is pared down to its essence. Bull VI has very little to do with the preceding forms of Bull V, although the main elements remain more or less pushed towards the right of the canvas. The work is scaled back entirely and its overall impression is therefore airy and uncrowded. Lichtenstein has increased the application of yellow throughout the sequence, and so the bright pigment accentuates the majority of the composition in Bull VI. The blue elements and the focal point have disappeared completely and have been replaced by coordinated and fixed red and black lines.

Lichtenstein perfectly maps a visual progression from naturalism to radical simplification in Bulls series, employing a deliberate combination of lithography, screen print and line cut. Bull VI has at last transformed the realistic image of the bull into a mere abstract cypher.