Peace Through Chemistry I (C.96) is among the most chromatic works Roy Lichtenstein made in 1970. Set in lithograph and screenprint in a rich palette of rose, yellow, blue, and grey, the work presents an overlapping arrangement of industrial forms — gears, pistons, connecting rods — drawn from the technical illustration of American manufacturing and filling the horizontal format with a near-mechanical energy. The Ben-Day dot fields structure the ground while the mechanical elements press forward, the layers building a work of considerable depth. The Peace Through Chemistry Series extended the close attention of Lichtenstein's earlier historical work into new territory.

Where the Cathedral and Haystack series had addressed Impressionism, and the Modern Head series had worked through Cubism and Constructivism, this series turned to the imagery of scientific and industrial illustration — the diagrams and technical drawings through which American industry had represented itself in the post-war decades. Peace Through Chemistry I (C.96) made this point at a moment of cultural tension around science and technology in America.

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