Roy Lichtenstein’s illusory  “House II” (left) is his wife Dorothy’s favorite sculpture. Photos by Jacqueline Carini/jacquelinecariniphotography.com

Twenty minutes before the start of press conference to launch the sculpture exhibit of superstar Pop art icon Roy Lichtenstein at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden on Monday, the artist’s widow, Dorothy, was making sure every brightly painted piece was in its place, positioned to greatest ironic effect.

As she wandered through the muggy garden, she found her favorite sculpture, “House II,” created in 1997.

Standing amidst the greenery of the garden, the bright white and red house with black lines that look like they could have been drawn in crayon at first seems flat and cartoonish — a typical Lichtenstein. But the house was created in such a way that it tricks the eye and changes dimensions as viewers walk past.

Dorothy began to laugh, which she often does when viewing or discussing her husband’s ironic and playful work.

“I think we should put some bamboo in front of this, so you can’t see the legs,” she said, to maintain the optical illusion of a real house built on a concrete slab.

At first, “House II” appears to be plucked from a comic strip, a place where only Brenda Starr could live. Then you realize it really is three-dimensional. Just as you begin to think it could be a real house with an interior and move to take another look, the house shifts and seems to reposition itself, jumping toward you, then receding away, even spinning. It’s all a mirage produced by Lichtenstein’s manipulation of line and color.

Dorothy said mesmerized viewers usually walk behind the sculpture to see if it’s attached to the ground or rolling on wheels. But “House II” is fixed on stakes and can’t move. It just seems like it does.

Fairchild Board of Trustees President Bruce Greer promised to plant some bamboo before the exhibit opens to the public on Saturday. Although the exhibit hasn’t officially opened yet, Lichtenstein’s “House II” sculpture already is working its magic on visitors.

“Yesterday, a school group came through and there were three 11th-grade boys — the perfect test case. They go like this,” Greer said, imitating them loping along with big, loose adolescent strides, stopping dead in their tracks and doing double-takes, “then one whispers, ‘Dude, that’s cool!’”

Roy Lichtenstein, along with Andy Warhol, is regarded as one of the most famous American Pop artists. Most of those who view the sculptures at Fairchild will recognize Lichtenstein’s most famous works: blown-up versions of cartoons lampooning romance comic strips, their sexy characters and cryptic, overblown dialogue, all depicted in Benday dots, mimicking newspaper print.

“He captured an essential spirit of what is purely American, and that’s why it remains so strong,” Dorothy said. “His sculptures look fresh, like they could have been done by a young artist today.”

One of the paintings he is most famous for, “Whaam!,” hangs in London’s Tate Modern and includes the caption “I pressed the fire control ... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky....” It’s one of many works featuring Lichtenstein’s trademark, one-syllable exclamation-point expressions borrowed from cartoons.

Jack Cowart, executive director of The Lichtenstein Foundation, which is based in Lichtenstein’s old Greenwich Village studio, said the painted sculptures retain the comic-strip style. And seeing them featured against Fairchild’s rare plants and palm trees seems, in itself, ironic — Lichtenstein’s art mocking the artificiality of mass culture in a setting that puts nature on a pedestal.

“Roy had a quirky sense of humor,” Cowart said. “It’s subtle.”

Lichtenstein created the 10 sculptures in the Fairchild exhibition during the last 15 years of his life, in the late ’80s and ’90s. Cowart said that was when advanced paints were available to make sculptures tough enough to handle Florida’s scorching weather.

Dorothy said her husband was healthy and prolific to the very end of his life, dying suddenly and unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1997 at age 73. His personality, she said, was the opposite of the extroverted humor he channeled into his art — his funny take on the funny papers and on popular culture.

“He tried to make his personality like his art,” Dorothy said, but he never overcame his shyness.

Dorothy, a New Yorker like her husband, became Roy’s second wife in 1968. They lived in Manhattan and also Southampton, Long Island. In the 1980s, they bought a house in Captiva Island, Fla., where Dorothy still spends part of each winter, enjoying her rare palm trees and plants that were inspired by visits to Fairchild since the 1980s.

She was delighted that Fairchild asked her and the Lichtenstein Foundation to do the exhibit, the follow-up act to the smash-success Chihuly at Fairchild, the spectacular glass sculpture exhibition that brought in record numbers of visitors and new members for two years in a row.

Dorothy said she has loved Miami since childhood, when her parents took her to the Delano for Christmas vacations. “It’s so glamorous in Miami,” she said. Walking through the gardens on Monday, she identified the palm trees by their scientific names. She first learned about them at Fairchild, then planted them on her own property.

When she used those Latin names to explain to her husband what was growing in their garden, he jokingly accused her of making them up.

What would Roy Lichtenstein say if he saw his sculptures spoofing mass culture in this tropical garden dedicated to appreciating nature? “Roy would love the exhibition,” Dorothy said. “He liked his work to have a life after he finished with it.”

Roy Lichtenstein at Fairchild will be displayed until May 31. Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is located at 10901 Old Cutler Road in Coral Gables. For more information, call 305-667-1651 or visit www.fairchildgarden.com.