Lot Essay
The Lenin paintings are the last series of portraits Warhol executed before his death in 1987. Completed in December 1986, this series was exhibited for the first time in February 1987 at Galerie Bernd Klüser in Munich two days after Warhol's death.
The image is taken from a black and white photograph of Lenin as a young man which was extracted in 1948 from a group photograph originally taken in 1897. Lenin appears as a self-assured young man with piercing eyes, and the pile of books are indicative of his occupation as an intellectual and political theorist. Lenin, 1986 is a perfect and beautiful example from this series in which Warhol used a reduced range of colors, adding to the austerity of the composition witnessed in the original photograph.
The image is taken from a black and white photograph of Lenin as a young man which was extracted in 1948 from a group photograph originally taken in 1897. Lenin appears as a self-assured young man with piercing eyes, and the pile of books are indicative of his occupation as an intellectual and political theorist. Lenin, 1986 is a perfect and beautiful example from this series in which Warhol used a reduced range of colors, adding to the austerity of the composition witnessed in the original photograph.