Andy Warhol Artwork Information

Andy Warhol Lithographs

Andy Warhol was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh as the son of Slovak immigrants. Andy Warhol's original name was Andrew Warhola. Andy Warhol's father was as a construction worker who died in an accident when Andy Warhol was 13 years old.

Andy Warhol showed an early talent in drawing and painting. After high school Andy Warhol studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Andy Warhol graduated in 1949 and went to New York where he worked as an illustrator for magazines like Vogue and Harpar's Bazaar and for commercial advertising. Andy Warhol soon became one of New York's most sought of and successful commercial illustrators.

In 1952 Andy Warhol had his first one-man show exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in New York. In 1956 Andy Warhol had an important group exhibition at the renowned Museum of Modern Art.

In the sixties Andy Warhol started painting daily objects of mass production like Campbell Soup cans and Coke bottles. Soon Andy Warhol became a famous figure in the New York art scene. From 1962 on Andy Warhol started making silkscreen prints of famous personalities like Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor.

The quintessence of Andy Warhol art was to remove the difference between fine arts and the commercial arts used for magazine illustrations, comic books, record albums or advertising campaigns. Andy Warhol once expressed his philosophy in one poignant sentence:

"When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums". The pop artist, Andy Warhol, not only depicted mass products but he also wanted to mass produce his own works of pop art. Consequently he founded The Factory in 1962. It was an art studio where Andy Warhol employed in a rather chaotic way "art workers" to mass produce mainly prints, lithographs & posters but also other items like shoes designed by the artist, Andy Warhol. The first location of "the factory" was on 231 E. 47th Street, 5th Floor (between 1st & 2nd Ave).

Andy Warhol's favorite printmaking technique was silkscreen, thus the term screenprint. It came closest to his idea of proliferation of art. Apart from being an Art Producing Machine, the Factory served as a filmmaking studio. Warhol made over 300 experimental underground films - most rather bizarre and some rather pornographic. Andy Warhol's first one was called Sleep and showed nothing else but a man sleeping over six hours.

The pop artist, Andy Warhol, loved cats, and images of them can be found on quite a few of his artworks. One of Andy Warhol's friends described him as a true workaholic. Andy Warhol was obsessed by the ambition to become famous and wealthy. And he knew he could achieve the American dream only by hard work.

Andy Warhol Screenprints

ADS - 1985

Andy Warhol made a portfolio called ADS of ten different screenprints on Lenox Museum Board. Each screenprint is 38" x 38". The regular edition is 190. Volkswagen is one of the screenprints in the portfolio as well as Mobil, Paramount, Life Savers, and Chanel to name a few.

Andy Warhol Artwork

Sunday B Morning Prints

The Sunday B. Morning Edition of the famous Marilyn series was conceived as a re-issue of Andy Warhol's first Marilyn Monroe prints of the 1960s using the original silkscreens. After a highly publicized contre-temps between Andy Warhol and the publisher, Warhol refused to sign more than a handful of prints and the now famous "fill in your own signature.." stamp was placed on the reverse of the edition.