Foot and Hand, made in 1964 in an edition of 300, is among Lichtenstein's earliest prints and one of the most concentrated expressions of the logic that would define his output.

The image places the viewer in the midst of an action: a booted foot comes down on a hand reaching for a gun, the space cropped so tightly that nothing exists outside this moment of confrontation. No face, no room, no story — only the three objects and the tension between them. This act of cropping was as considered as any other decision in the work.

By removing context, Lichtenstein made the image's drama entirely a property of its printed construction — of the interaction between the bold outlines, the Ben-Day dots of the yellow-and-pink ground, and the forms that the dots surround. The viewer supplies the narrative from their own experience of action comics; the print supplies only the printed signs that trigger it.

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