Important Notice

Lot 42

“Everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes”

Born as Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 to a working class Slovakian immigrant family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was the youngest of three children.

During his youth he suffered from chorea, a neurological disorder, and was frequently bed-ridden. During these times, he found distraction in popular celebrity magazines and DC comic books, which later became... “Everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes”

Born as Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 to a working class Slovakian immigrant family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was the youngest of three children.

During his youth he suffered from chorea, a neurological disorder, and was frequently bed-ridden. During these times, he found distraction in popular celebrity magazines and DC comic books, which later became his first source of artistic inspiration.

In 1937 the artist attended drawing classes at the Carnegie Museum, and from 1945 until 1949 he studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. It was at this institution that he met American painter Philip Pearlstein, with whom he moved to New York in 1949.

In New York, Warhol easily found work as an illustrator, and had his first taste of success. As a commercial artist, he worked on several projects commissioned by companies such as RCA Records, Glamour Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, NBC, Tiffany & Co. and Vogue. He also worked for the department stores Bonwit Teller and I. Miller, for which he designed eye-catching window displays.

In the 1950s Warhol moved from graphic art to painting and drawing, and in 1952 held his first solo exhibition titled “Fifteen drawings based on the writing of Truman Capote” at the Hugo Gallery. Over time, he started using photo-based techniques like silkscreen printing in his painting process, and in 1956, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, included some of his works in a group exhibition.

Following the turbulent times of the 1960s, Warhol produced several works inspired by its events, some of which are now iconic of his extensive practice. It was during this period that the artist started following the Pop Art movement, wherein the main subjects were mass produced objects and idols.

Around the mid-1960s, Warhol also started working on videos and films in ‘The Factory’, his silver painted and foil draped studio in Manhattan. Among his early films are “Sleep” (1963), “Blow Job” (1964), “Empire” (1963) and “Kiss” (1963-1964). However it was the pseudo-documentary “Chelsea Girls” (1966) that established him as a talent to be reckoned with in the American film industry. Through his career, Warhol would make almost 600 films and 2500 videos.

Following the exhibition “Flower” in Paris, the artist momentarily retired from painting but continued creating sculptures, prints and films. He also became interested in the field of music and performance, and created the travelling multi-media spectacle, “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable” with the Velvet Underground and Nico.

In 1968, Warhol was almost killed when Valerie Solanas, an aspiring playwright and radical feminist author who appeared in one of his films, shot at him. This event changed Warhol’s life and art forever, prompting him to start to obsessively documenting and recording it, and leading to the creation of close to 3,400 audio tapes. Part of the content of these tapes was published in 1987 under the title “The Warhol Diaries”.

Through his career, Warhol managed to infiltrate and deeply influence the worlds of fashion, media, celebrity and music in addition to those of art and film. Amongst other things, he co-founded ‘Interview’ magazine, appeared on television in an episode of “The Love Boat”, published a book titled ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’, designed Grammy-winning record covers for The Rolling Stones, signed with a modelling agency, contributed short films to “Saturday Night Live”, founded the New York Academy of Art with Stuart Pivar, and produced “Andy Warhol’s TV”.

At the height of his popularity in the 1970s, many celebrities commissioned Warhol portraits, inspired by his new coloured screen-print paintings of politicians, celebrities, sports figures, writers and others. These included John Lennon, Liza Minnelli, the Shah of Iran and Brigitte Bardot. Some of his most well-known artworks from this period include “Mao”, “Skulls”, “Camouflage”, “The Last Supper” and “Guns”.

On February 22, 1987, Warhol passed away in a New York hospital following a routine gall bladder surgery. In his honour, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Andy Warhol Museum were respectively founded in 1987 and 1994. The Foundation, created in accordance with his will from the sale of his estate, still remains one of the largest philanthropic visual arts organizations in the United States. In 1991, the artist’s brother John helped establish the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Slovakia, close to the village in which their parents were born.

Andy Warhol, an incomparable artist, still remains an inspiration to several contemporary visual artists and producers, and continues to be regarded as an icon in the fields of graphic design, film-making and photography amongst others.

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