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Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
in 1928. In 1945 he entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie
Mellon University) where he majored in pictorial design. Upon graduation,
Warhol moved to New York where he found steady work as a commercial artist.
He worked as an illustrator for several magazines including Vogue, Harper's
Bazaar and The New Yorker and did advertising and window displays for retail
stores such as Bonwit Teller and I. Miller. Prophetically, his first assignment
was for Glamour magazine for an article titled "Success is a Job in New
York."
Throughout the 1950s, Warhol enjoyed a successful career
as a commercial artist, winning several commendations from the Art Director's
Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In these early years, he
shortened his name to "Warhol." In 1952, the artist had his first
individual show at the Hugo Gallery, exhibiting Fifteen Drawings Based on
the Writings of Truman Capote. His work was exhibited in several other venues
during the 1950s, including his first group show at The Museum of Modern Art
in 1956.
The 1960s was an extremely prolific decade for Warhol. Appropriating
images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons
of 20th-century art, such as the Campbell's Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyn
Monroe screenprints. In addition to painting, Warhol made several 16mm films
which have become underground classics such as Chelsea Girls, Empire and Blow
Job. In 1968, Valerie Solanis, founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for
Cutting Up Men) walked into Warhol's studio, known as the Factory, and shot
the artist three times in the chest. Doctors had to perform a risky procedure
to stop his heart from stopping and he nearly died.
At the start of the 1970s, Warhol began publishing Interview
magazine and renewed his focus on painting. Works created in this decade
include Maos, Skulls, Hammer and Sickles, Torsos and Shadows and
many commissioned portraits. Warhol also published The
Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back Again). Firmly established
as a major 20th-century artist and international celebrity, Warhol exhibited
extensively in museums and galleries around the world.
The artist began the 1980s with the publication
of POPism: The Warhol '60s and with exhibitions of
Portraits of Jews
of the Twentieth Century and the Retrospectives
and Reversal series. He also created two cable television
shows, "Andy Warhol's TV" in 1982 and "Andy
Warhol's Fifteen Minutes" for MTV in 1986. His
paintings from the 1980s include The Last Suppers,
Rorschachs and, in a return to his first great theme
of Pop, a series called Ads.
Warhol also engaged in a series of collaborations with
younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco
Clemente and Keith Haring.
Following routine gall bladder surgery,
Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial
in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized
a memorial mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York
that was attended by more than 2,000 people. In 1989,
the Museum of Modern Art in New York had a major retrospective
of his works.
For more information,
buy the book Andy
Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne from Amazon:
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