ANDY WARHOL, FLOWERS, GALERIE SONNABEND INVITATION, OFF SET LITHOGRAPH IN COLOURS, 1970
Taken from Warhol's Flowers series, this invitation features one of Andy Warhol’s most identifiable prints, showing four hibiscus flowers in excessively saturated colours. This print is exemplary of the way in which Warhol appropriated and abstracted images to convey underlying political commentaries that are not necessarily apparent upon first look.
Produced in the years following Warhol’s Death and Disaster paintings, Thirteen Most Wanted Men portraits and the portraits of Jackie Kennedy following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Flowers series is unexpected in its subject matter. Warhol is said to have used the flowers motif as a symbol of purity and fragility amidst widespread violence, his psychedelic colour palette strongly linked to the rise of the Flower Power movement of the 1960s.
In his choice of bright colours and simplified form, Warhol creates an aesthetically pleasing print, however the Flowers Series references subversive and subliminal themes surrounding the existence of death in life. Warhol used flowers as symbols of nature’s ephemerality and the fleeting impermanence of beauty. Death was a frequent theme in Warhol’s life and work, as such, alongside images of Jackie Kennedy, Marylin Monroe, skulls, electric chairs and car crashes, these brightly coloured flowers became the perfect abstract tool to capture the brevity of life on canvas.
Find out more about Flowers by Andy Warhol.
ABOUT ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol (born Andrew Warhola) is a name synonymous with the celebrity culture and mass consumerism which coloured the boulevards of New York City in the Post World War II era. Born into a working class immigrant family in the urban landscape around the bustling metropolis, Warhol’s early life was characterised by a climb up the capitalist rungs of society.
The artist himself noted, “buying is more American than thinking, and I’m as American as they come”, this quote came to demarcate Warhol’s artistic practice as he embraced the commodification of the American Dream. The Pop artist’s beginnings in the business sector gave him the practical skill set to experiment with a more commercial approach to art throughout his career, particularly with regards to screen printing. Read more about Andy Warhol.
