Andy Warhol: Biography & Artwork

Andy
Warhol

20th century Pop titan Andy Warhol blurred the boundaries between high art and consumerism, and his obsession with cultural staples and celebrity changed the course of art history forever. Whether you're looking to buy or sell one of Warhol's original prints and editions, browse our network's most in demand works. Receive complimentary valuations and market advice on any original print, with zero obligation to sell.

Biography

Cultural icon and father of Pop Art, Andy Warhol is one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. Known as much for his life as his art, everything about Andy Warhol screams celebrity culture and mass consumerism.

From his beginnings as a student of commercial art to his years as a commercial illustrator, it was always clear that Warhol’s interest lied in mass culture. A true reporter of his time, the artist never shied away from capturing the reality of the American Dream, from the glitz of Hollywood to the tragedies permeating everyday life. From his Deaths and Disaster series to canned soup, from Mickey Mouse to Ronald Reagan, Warhol’s art opened the door to the encounter of high and low, pushing the boundaries of what could be considered art. A prolific artist, producing print after print at his Factory, Warhol also pioneered a serial approach to artmaking that celebrated the art object as a commercial commodity.

While Warhol’s journey to fame did not happen overnight, the commercial and popular success that his work enjoys has never stopped. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the artist began to experiment with what came to define his unique approach to artmaking: silk-screening. Silk-screening allowed Warhol to mimic the simplified language of advertisement, defined by bold outlines and flat colour blocks, and to repeat the same image many times across canvases and paper.

It was only in 1962, however, that it all came together for the artist. While a series of exhibitions in New York in the 1950s had already paved the way for his success, 1962 marked the year the artist began working on two of his most popular body of works: the Campbell's Soup Can series and the Marilyn Monroe series. The Campbell’s Soup Can series consisted of 32 canvases created through screen printing and directly challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism at the time. Countering prevalent notions of originality and authorship, Warhol promoted the use of processes of mechanical reproduction in art and the distancing of the hand of the artist. Equally, if not more recognisable, Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych immortalised the young American actress through 50 repeated portraits drawn from a press image of the actress from the film Niagara. The painting was completed by Warhol in the weeks following Monroe’s tragic death and commemorated the actress at the height of her career.

Warhol would return to these subjects many times, creating numerous paintings and editions. An iteration of the Marilyn series, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964), sold for US$ 195 million at Christie’s New York, became the most expensive piece of 20th-century art ever sold.

The long lasting influences of Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp is present in Warhol’s work that both strives to shock and make use of everyday objects in the realm of fine art. Warhol’s cardboard Brillo boxes from 1964 and 1968 are very closely aligned to Duchamp’s concept of the ‘readymade’. The two artists also shared an interest in cross-dressing and photography. In 2010 the Andy Warhol Museum produced an exhibition that acknowledged the relationship between the two artists titled, ‘Twisted Pair: Marcel Duchamp/Andy Warhol’.
Unsurprisingly then, Warhol was also inspired by the Neo Dada group, which included the artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, who prided themselves in working within the gap between art and life. With his tongue in cheek subjects and brightly coloured silk screens Warhol sought to differentiate himself from the sombre formalism of Abstract Expressionism which had come to dominate the American post-war art world, proclaiming that, 'the Pop artists [made] images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognise in a split second…all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.'
Many of Warhol’s works throughout his career point to the artist’s sexuality as a gay man, despite the criminalisation of homosexuality at the time in the United States. Warhol’s sexuality has remained a topic that is spoken little about in relation to his life and work, a reminder of the lasting effects of the homophobia that characterised the socio-political landscape of mid-late 20th-century America. In the 1950s Warhol produced sketchbooks of drawings of the male form, including studies of feet, torsos and genitalia, entitled, Boy Portraits. His films from the 1960s were also overlain with references to homosexual desire and sexual escapades. The artists Sex Parts and Torso series from the 1970s also engaged with the male (and female) nude form.
After losing the lease on his Silver Factory in 1967, Warhol was famously shot in 1968 in his studio by the writer Valerie Solanas, who featured in his film I, a Man (1967). The shooting was nearly fatal and had a profound effect on the rest of the artist’s life and output, marking a transition from Warhol’s all-encompassing, experimental art practice, to one more subdued.
One of Warhol’s last works was Last Supper based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece, completed in 1986 about a year before the artist’s death.
The artwork is prophetic, touching upon key themes within Warhol’s oeuvre and personal life, such as religion, mortality, and symbolic iconography. The original artwork is the largest size ever brought to auction by the Pop Artist; it sold for $60,875,000 with Christie’s in 2017, among one of the highest prices ever achieved for Warhol’s work. This work was on display on a huge scale at Tate Modern’s Warhol retrospective in 2020.

In May 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964), sold for US$195 million (£158 million) at Christie’s New York, making it the most expensive piece of 20th-century art ever sold.

A testament to the level of fame and popularity that Warhol still weilds today, this work is one of his most immediately recognisable. The timeless Marilyn Monroe stares out at us in all her Pop-saturated glory, coy and indescernible expression radiating that sense of effortless celebrity which Warhol was so drawn to.

The fact that this screenprint was one of five that were quite literally 'shot' by revolver-wielding performance artist Dorothy Podmer in 1964 only adds to its notoriety, despite having since been repaired.