A MAJOR new exhibition of the ground-breaking Pop Art of the American artist Roy Lichtenstein can let Scottish young people see that contemporary art can be full of "joy", his widow has said.

Dorothy Lichtenstein was in Edinburgh yesterday to mark the opening of Artist Rooms: Roy Lichtenstein, a show of the work of the artist known for his colourful images inspired by comic books, cartoons and other mass produced images.

The show, which runs from March 14 to January 10 next year, is part of the Artist Rooms collection and touring programme, and has been arranged with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation of New York.

Mrs Lichtenstein said she hoped that young people visiting the show would receive a sense of the artist's joy.

Lichtenstein, a pioneer of the Pop Art movement, was born in 1923 and died in 1997.

"Something that was very important to Roy was that people look just beyond the image," she said.

"I think Roy would really like for people to have a sense of joy - I was reading an article in the New York Times before I left for Scotland, and there was an article about some people having a 'happiness gene' and you know, I think Roy had that.

"I mean, traditionally we have always thought of the suffering and the starving artist, and art - especially abstract expressionism - being the art of torment and angst, but I think Roy would like young people to know that art can be celebratory.

"Of course art was celebratory in the past - celebrating religion or royalty, or in the Dutch case, everyday life."

Mrs Lichtenstein said she "loved" the exhibition and was very happy to be in Scotland for the first time - a country that Lichtenstein himself did not visit.

She said the show had been a project under way for four or five years with Anthony d'Offay, the founder of the Artist Rooms collections.

"To finally see it in place - it looks wonderful and I am very happy with it," she said.

The three-room display includes 16 large-scale prints made in the 1990s which were recently placed on long-term loan to Artist Rooms by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

These are shown alongside works dating from the 1960s, including the comic book painting In the Car (1963), from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art's collection; and a steel relief, Wall Explosion (1965), on loan from Tate in London.

The exhibition, which is free, also includes Reflections: Art (1988), a large oil painting on loan from a private collection and two Modern Art prints from 1996.

Shown beside these are examples from his Water Lilies series, which pays homage to Monet's famous, late Nymphéas paintings.