Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was born to Czech immigrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928. From 1945 to 1949 he studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. In 1949 he moved to New York, where he worked as a well-paid commercial illustrator. He produced his first paintings in 1960. Warhol ultimately became famous with his silkscreens picturing everyday objects like soup cans or famous people like Marilyn Monroe. He observed the motto “mass for the masses”, and is considered one of the creators of Pop Art. In 1962 he set up his first “factory”, which was followed by others: the legendary studios in which he worked together with various artists and sought inspiration. Artist colleagues like Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí would meet there, as well as musicians such as Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. In the 1970s Warhol extended his art to photography and film. Important exhibitions showed his works. He was represented at documenta three times, and in 2012 New York’s Metropolitan Museum devoted the exhibition Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years to him. Warhol died in New York in 1987.