Born to Slovakian immigrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol’s career as the foremost proponent of Pop Art began during his days as a commercial artist for newspapers and magazines. Over the 1950s and 1960s, he rose to become the king of the New York avant-garde and one of the most important and iconic artists of the 20th century. Works such as Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and his screen prints of Marilyn Monroe have come to define our notions of 20th-century art.
For Andy Warhol art is created out of the imagery and iconography of consumerism and celebrity culture, and he applied the same commercial processes of mass production to make it. It was an idea that venerated the banality of popular culture. Warhol sought to demolish rarefication in art and redefine the artist from a Romantic visionary to an organising principle in a commercial system of mass production.
Having had his first solo shows of paintings in the early 1950s, Warhol began focusing on screen printing in the 1960s. He opened his studio, The Factory, in 1963. The Factory became the centre for an entourage of Warhol’s ‘superstars’, which counted artists, models, celebrities and musicians such as The Velvet Underground. The latter’s debut album cover featured Warhol’s now-iconic ‘peel slowly and see’ Banana. By 1965 Warhol was making seminal films such as Blow Job (1964) and Sleep (1963). The Factory would remain an important centre of New York Bohemianism, but Warhol began distancing himself from its more unconventional fringes following an attempt on his life by the radical feminist and Factory acolyte, Valerie Solanas, in 1968.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Warhol returned to painting with works such as his ‘Oxidation Paintings’ series. He mentored and collaborated with a new generation of younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente. He was just 58 when he died unexpectedly following a routine gall bladder operation in 1987.
Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn made auction history at Christie’s New York in 2022. It sold for US$195 million, making it the most expensive 20th-century work of art to sell at auction.
Browse Andy Warhol photographs, drawings, sculptures, books
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Vesuvius
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Lenin
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Portraits of the Artists, from Ten from Leo Castelli
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Chicken Noodle Soup, from Campbell's Soup I
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Flowers
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Electric Chair: One Print
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) : One Print
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Mao : One Print
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Double Mickey Mouse
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Superman, from Myths
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Grace Kelly
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Indian Head Nickel, from Cowboys and Indians
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Northwest Coast Mask, from Cowboys and Indians
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Joseph Beuys
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Shot Sage Blue Marilyn
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Four Marlons
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Race Riot
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Sixty Last Suppers
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Coca-Cola [3]
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Colored Mona Lisa
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Double Elvis [Ferus Type]
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Statue of Liberty
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
White Marilyn
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Self-Portrait
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Double Elvis [Ferus Type]
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Four Marilyns
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Flowers
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Double Marlon
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Six Self Portraits
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Most Wanted Men No. 11, John Joseph H., Jr.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Silver Liz (diptych)
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Self-Portrait
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable)
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Sixteen Jackies
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Skull
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable)
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Marlon
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Liz [Early Colored Liz]
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Big Electric Chair
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Last Supper
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Silver Liz
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Muhammad Ali
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Self-Portrait
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Silver Liz
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Flowers
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Grand Prix Car (Streamlined Version, 1954)