ANDY WARHOL

Above: Oxidation 1978

Biography:

Andy was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh as the son of Slovak immigrants. His original name was Andrew Warhola. His father was as a construction worker and died in an accident when Andy was 13 years old. Andy showed an early talent in drawing and painting. After high school he studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Warhol graduated in 1949 and went to New York where he worked as an illustrator for magazines like Vogue and Harpar's Bazaar and for commercial advertising. He soon became one of New York's most sought of and successful commercial illustrators.

The 1950s:
During the 1950’s time period Warhol continued as a commercial artist. He gained fame for his whimsical drawings of shoe advertisements.His ads were done in a loose, blotted ink style.
During the 1950’s Warhol was hired by RCA Records to design album covers and promotional materials. This is a album cover for rock and roll artist David Bowie that Warhol designed.
Andy Warhol had his first one-man show exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in New York in 1952.
Featured was his work, 15 Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote.

The Factory:
In 1962, Andy Warhol founded The Factory. It was an art studio where he employed “art workers” to produce a large amount of prints and posters.


The Shooting:
In 1968 Warhol was shot by Valerie Solana, who starred in his film “I, A Man, in his studio. She claimed “he had too much control over my life.” This event was said to have ended the “Factory 60’s.”

The 1970s:
Throughout the 1970s, Warhol frequently socialized with celebrities such as Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Truman Capote, both of whom had been important early subjects in his art. He started to receive dozens-and soon hundreds-of commissions for painted portraits from wealthy socialites, music and film stars, and other clients. He was a regular partygoer at Studio 54, the famous New York disco, along with celebrities such as fashion designer Halston, entertainer Liza Minnelli, and Bianca Jagger. In 1971 Warhol co-designed the cover for The Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers, featuring a close-up photo of the torso of a man wearing blue jeans with a real working zipper. The design was nominated for a Grammy Award.. His commissioned portrait paintings began in 1963, with portraits of the collector Ethel Scull, entertainer Bobby Short, and others. The 1970s was also a period of experimentation for Warhol. He made 3 versions of a sculpture called Rain Machine (Daisy Waterfall) for the Osaka World’s Fair in 1970. These consist of a large shower of water in front of a wall of 3-D lenticular prints of daisies. In the mid-1970s he experimented with an idea for an Invisible Sculpture, made of motion detectors and loud sirens. In 1978, he produced a large series of works called Oxidation paintings, made with human urine on canvases covered with metallic paint.

The 1980s:
In the mid-1980s his television shows, Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes and Andy Warhol’s TV, aired nationally on MTV and on Madison Square Garden cable television in New York. He created work for Saturday Night Live, and appeared in an episode of The Love Boat. In 1984, Warhol collaborated with young artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring on artworks. Warhol returned to painting with a brush in these, briefly abandoning the silkscreen method he had used exclusively since 1962. Nearly all of Warhol’s works in every medium were created with the help of friends (beginning with writer Ralph Ward, and the crowd at Serendipity 3 café in the 1950s), paid assistants (beginning with Vito Giallo and Nathan Gluck in the 1950s), and managers such as Fred Hughes. Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987, due to complications following surgery to remove his gall bladder. In 1988, a ten-day auction of his enormous estate of art and antiques raised over 20 million dollars for The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Andy Warhol Museum was announced in 1989, and opened in Pittsburgh in 1994.