Andy Warhol

(1928-1987)

Andy Warhol in his studio, 1342 Lexington Avenue, New York, circa 1962
(present lot illustrated)
Photograph by Alfred Statler
Artwork: © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Coca-Cola [3] , 1962, Andy Warhol’s large, sleekly executed, black and white portrait of the famously curvaceous Coca-Cola bottle is one of the first great icons of American Pop Art as well as being the painting that set the artist on his creative path. The most recognizable brand in the world, Coca-Cola is a symbol as resonant and contentious today in our globalized age of corporation culture as it was at the height of the ‘Mad-Men’ era of the early 1960s when Andy Warhol (he was no longer an advert illustrator in 1962) first made it. Coca Cola [3] is an historic work and as Warhol’s memoirs of the 1960s attest, the story of its genesis is also the story of the beginnings of Pop Art in America.

"I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use every day and never think about."

–Andy Warhol