Striking examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings (and why they still hit in 2025)

When people ask for examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings, the conversation almost always circles back to the same three images: soup cans, comic-book lovers, and a giant blonde superstar. They’re more than just posters in dorm rooms; they’re the visual shorthand for an entire movement.

Let’s start with those three, then branch out to more examples that show how wild and flexible Pop Art really is.

Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962): the supermarket as museum

Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans might be the single most famous example of Pop Art on earth. Thirty-two canvases, each showing a different flavor of soup, lined up like a grocery aisle that wandered into a gallery by accident.

Why it matters:

• Warhol treated a cheap, mass-produced product like it deserved the same respect as a Renaissance painting.
• The repetition feels mechanical, like the cans rolled right off a factory belt onto the wall.
• It perfectly captures Pop Art’s obsession with mass media, branding, and the blur between art and commerce.

Today, the full set lives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it still feels weirdly current in a world where brand logos dominate our screens. When people search for examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings, this is almost always the first mental image.

Other Warhol paintings that count as best examples of Pop Art:

• Marilyn Diptych (1962) – Fifty silkscreened Marilyn Monroe heads, half in screaming color, half fading into ghostly black and white.
• Eight Elvises (1963) – Elvis repeated like a cinematic glitch, part cowboy, part product.

Together, these works show how Warhol turned celebrities into mass-produced icons, just as factory-made as his soup cans.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam! (1963): comics go wall-size

If Warhol is the king of logos and celebrities, Roy Lichtenstein is the monarch of comic-book drama. Whaam! (1963) is one of the sharpest real examples of Pop Art’s love affair with printed media.

Two panels, flat colors, thick black outlines, and that explosive title text: “WHAAM!” A fighter jet fires a rocket that blows up another plane in a blaze of orange and yellow. It’s based on a 1962 DC Comics panel, but Lichtenstein enlarged it, simplified it, and painted it by hand to mimic cheap printing.

Why it still hits:

• It looks like a comic strip frozen mid-action, but on the scale of a mural.
• It asks whether something printed for kids can be treated as serious art.
• It exposes how mass media glamorizes violence, even when it looks playful.

When teachers or museum guides give examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings, *Whaam!* **almost always joins Warhol’s soup cans and Marilyns in the lineup. The painting lives at Tate in London and remains a go-to reference in art history courses around the world.

Other Lichtenstein paintings that are best examples of Pop Art:

• Drowning Girl (1963) – A woman sobbing in a rising sea: “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!” Melodrama, but make it graphic design.
• Hopeless (1963) – Another tearful heroine, all dots and speech bubbles, exposing how romance comics packaged emotion.

James Rosenquist’s F-111 (1964–65): advertising overload on steroids

James Rosenquist came from the world of billboard painting, and it shows. F-111 is a monumental collage of images stretched across more than 80 feet of canvas. A fighter jet runs the length of the painting, sliced and overlapped with spaghetti, a little girl under a hairdryer, car tires, light bulbs, cake, and more.

It’s one of the most ambitious examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings because it doesn’t just quote advertising—it swallows it whole.

What makes it powerful:

• It uses the language of ads (bright colors, cropped images, seductive objects) to comment on war and consumer culture.
• The jet flows through all the panels, tying together domestic life and military power.
• It feels like flipping through TV channels in the 1960s, long before we started doomscrolling.

F-111 is often discussed alongside Warhol and Lichtenstein as a best example of Pop Art’s political edge. It’s not as instantly recognizable as a soup can, but in art circles, it’s absolutely one of the top examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings that define the movement.

Beyond the big three: more examples include British and American Pop pioneers

The story doesn’t stop with Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist. To really understand the range of Pop Art, you need more real examples that stretch the idea of what “popular” means.

Richard Hamilton’s collage that started it all

Before the American explosion, British artist Richard Hamilton created a tiny but mighty collage in 1956: Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?

This piece is often called one of the earliest examples of Pop Art. It shows a muscleman holding a giant lollipop labeled “POP,” a pin-up girl on a couch, a TV, canned ham, vacuum cleaner, and wall-to-wall ads.

Why it matters:

• It captures mid-century consumer culture in one cramped, chaotic living room.
• It uses magazine cutouts, the raw material of everyday visual life.
• It predicted how Pop Art would treat the home as a kind of showroom for products.

When art historians list examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings, Hamilton often gets an honorary spot as the movement’s British godparent.

Eduardo Paolozzi and the machine-made dream

Another British voice, Eduardo Paolozzi, stitched together ads, pinups, and tech imagery into futuristic collages. While many of his works are prints rather than paintings, they’re still key examples include:

• I was a Rich Man’s Plaything (1947) – A collage mixing pin-up imagery, Coca-Cola branding, and a gun with the word “POP” bursting from it.

Paolozzi’s work shows how Pop didn’t just celebrate consumer culture; it poked at its weirdness and anxiety, too.

Pauline Boty: the pop feminist you should know

In the 1960s, Pauline Boty brought a sharp, feminist angle to British Pop Art. Her paintings mix movie stars, politics, and personal symbolism.

One standout example of her work:

• The Only Blonde in the World (1963) – A cropped, larger-than-life Marilyn Monroe, surrounded by bold colors and pattern. It looks glamorous, but there’s a tension there: who owns this image of Marilyn, and who gets to look at her?

Boty’s work is now being revisited in exhibitions and scholarship, making her one of the best real examples of how Pop Art can critique the very icons it seems to celebrate.

How these examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings influence 2024–2025 culture

Pop Art never really left; it just migrated from canvas to screen. The examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings we’ve covered keep popping up (pun fully intended) in new places.

Branding and fashion: Warhol in your closet

In 2024–2025, you can see Pop Art DNA all over fashion collaborations and streetwear drops. Brands remix Warhol’s Marilyns and soup cans on hoodies, sneakers, and bags. Lichtenstein-style dots and speech bubbles show up in capsule collections and graphic tees.

Museums like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and MoMA regularly feature Pop Art in their programming, and their online shops are basically Pop boutiques—posters, mugs, and accessories that turn these best examples of Pop Art into everyday objects again. It’s a perfect loop: art about consumer products becomes consumer products about art.

Digital art, memes, and filters

Scroll social media and you’ll find Pop-style filters that flatten your selfie into bright blocks of color, or apps that turn your pet into a Warhol grid. Meme culture loves the clarity of Pop Art: a bold image, a punchy phrase, instant impact.

Contemporary digital artists borrow from the examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings by:

• Using repeated celebrity faces or influencer images.
• Quoting brand logos and slogans ironically.
• Mixing political imagery with candy-colored palettes.

The spirit is the same as the 1960s: use the visual language everyone already recognizes, then twist it.

Why these paintings became the best examples of Pop Art

So why do these particular works keep getting cited as the best examples when people ask for examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings?

A few shared traits:

1. They feel familiar at first glance.
Soup cans, comic panels, movie stars, jets, spaghetti—these aren’t obscure symbols. They’re everyday images that were already circulating in ads, comics, and magazines.

2. They’re easy to recognize, hard to forget.
Flat colors, simple shapes, bold outlines, and repetition make them stick in your brain like a logo. That’s why they work so well on posters and album covers.

3. They sit right on the line between celebration and critique.
Are Warhol’s soup cans praising consumer culture or mocking it? Is Lichtenstein glamorizing war or exposing how comics do? F-111 is made of ad-like fragments, but the mood is tense, not cheerful.

4. They still work in a hyper-digital world.
In 2025, we’re drowning in images. These paintings anticipated that flood and gave us a visual toolkit for thinking about it.

When you put Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist side by side, you get three very different but tightly connected examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings: branding, comics, and collage—three main highways through Pop Land.

Quick FAQ about examples of Pop Art paintings

Q: What are the best-known examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings?
A: The three most frequently cited are Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam!, and James Rosenquist’s F-111. Together, they’re often used as textbook examples of how Pop Art tackled consumer goods, comics, and mass media.

Q: What other real examples of Pop Art paintings should I know?
A: Look at Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych, Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl, Richard Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, and Pauline Boty’s The Only Blonde in the World. These examples include both American and British Pop and show how the movement crossed the Atlantic.

Q: Are modern works influenced by these classic Pop Art examples?
A: Absolutely. Contemporary artists and designers borrow Pop strategies all the time—using flat graphics, bold color, and recognizable logos or celebrities. Museum collections and education resources from institutions like The National Gallery of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art highlight how Pop Art paved the way for today’s media-saturated visual culture.

Q: How can I tell if a painting is an example of Pop Art?
A: Look for everyday subject matter (ads, comics, brands, celebrities), a graphic or printed feel, and a sense that the artist is both enjoying and questioning popular culture. If it looks like it could have escaped from a magazine, billboard, or TV screen, it might be a Pop Art example of painting.

By tracing these classic works—from Warhol’s supermarket icons to Rosenquist’s billboard epics—you get a clear map of the movement. These are the examples of 3 iconic examples of pop art paintings that keep showing up in textbooks, museum walls, and, increasingly, your social feed.