Andy Warhol American, 1927-1987

Fascinated by consumer culture, the media, and fame, Andy Warhol became one of the most famous and important artists of the 20th-century. Warhol’s early work, especially his drawings, played a crucial role in shaping his later Pop Art sensibility. Before becoming the icon of Pop, Andy Warhol began as a commercial illustrator in 1950s New York, gaining recognition for his delicate, line-based drawings—often created using a technique called blotted line, which combined ink drawing with basic printmaking. These early works frequently featured fashion, shoes, cats, cakes, and portraits. 

 

Warhol gained worldwide fame in the 1960s for his Pop masterpieces, widely known and reproduced works that often eclipse his equally significant late work as well as his crucial beginnings in the commercial art world. Warhol deliberately infused his work with a mechanical and impersonal character that intensified when he adopted silkscreen printing techniques in order to increase his production. To accelerate this process even further, he employed a large group of assistants in his studio, dubbed "The Factory." This practice brilliantly reflected the commercial, industrial economy of the mechanical reproduction age.

 

Warhol was also a popular and influential figure in the underground film movement; his documentary approach often focused on banal and repetitive subject matter. In the 1970s he shifted his attention back to painting portraits of famous people, mainly working on commission. Warhol's bland persona, silver wig, and public statements such as, "In the future everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes," epitomized the underground culture of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1975 he published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. During the 1980s Warhol often collaborated with younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His career was suddenly cut short in 1987 when he died of complications after gall bladder surgery.