The earliest origins of Pop art can be traced to the mid-to-late 1950s in Britain and the United States, where artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns combined visual aspects of advertising, comic books, and popular culture with theoretical elements of Dada and Surrealism. Works like Paolozzi’s piece I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything and Hamilton’s Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? are considered the earliest Pop art pieces, both containing the actual text “pop.” Often regarded as a reaction to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, the Pop style often played up elements of irony, kitsch, humor and appropriation, juxtaposing found elements with original flair.  In the early 1950s a group of young artists and writers known as the Independent Group coined the term “pop art” after a presentation by Paolozzi which incorporated American pop culture into a series of collages.

The first major art world recognition of Pop art came in the form of a 1962 exhibition “Symposium on Pop Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, setting the stage for the next evolution of the movement in the United States. Artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg gained popularity, however it was Andy Warhol’s brash, repetitive prints of celebrities, rock stars and objects from mass consumerism that permeated modern culture. Variations of the Pop movement soon took hold in Europe with Sigmar Polke’s Capitalist Realism in Germany and Nouveau Réalisme in France, which included Yves Klein and Niki de Saint Phalle. The bold, uncompromising nature of Pop art challenged the divide between high and low culture, questioning the influence of commodity and the boundaries of contemporary art making.