American Indian Theme IV (C.163) introduced the most unusual material combination in Roy Lichtenstein's American Indian Theme Series — a woodcut combined with lithography on handmade Suzuki paper, the two processes producing a surface that held both the physical texture of the woodblock and the tonal range of the lithographic mark. The picture depicted symbolic forms drawn from Indigenous American decorative traditions — a cross, flowing wood-grain patterning, geometric elements — rendered in a palette of deep red, gold, and black.

The combination of woodcut and lithography was technically ambitious and significant in its effects. The two processes produced different qualities of mark — the woodcut's physical pressure and grain, the lithography's tonal subtlety — and their combination gave American Indian Theme IV (C.163) a surface complexity the woodcut-only works in the series could not achieve. Lichtenstein was consistently attentive to the expressive range of different printmaking processes, and the addition of lithography here extended the series' range at a point where the subject matter was itself more complex and densely layered than the surrounding works.

The series as a whole was examining what happened when Lichtenstein's own style was brought into contact with decorative traditions that had developed outside the Western fine art mainstream. American Indian Theme IV (C.163) was the most technically hybrid work in that encounter — using a combination of Western printmaking processes to engage with an ornamental tradition that had its own independent relationship to materials and image-making.

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