Andy Warhol | |
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![]() Warhol in 1980 | |
Born | Andrew Warhola Jr. August 6, 1928 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Died | February 22, 1987 New York City, U.S. | (aged 58)
Resting place | St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania |
Education | Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University) |
Known for | Printmaking, painting, cinema, photography |
Notable work |
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Style | Pop art, contemporary art |
Movement | Pop art |
Partner | Jed Johnson (1968–1980) |
Signature | |
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Andy Warhol (/ˈwɔːrhɒl/;[1] born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century.[2][3][4] His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s. After exhibiting his work in art galleries, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist in the 1960s. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.[5][6][7] He directed and produced several underground films starring a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with inspiring the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." Warhol managed and produced the experimental rock band the Velvet Underground. He also founded Interview and authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties.
In June 1968, Warhol was almost killed by radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who shot him inside his studio.[8] After gallbladder surgery, Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia in February 1987 at the age of 58 in New York.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Warhol has been described as the "bellwether of the art market".[9] Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. His works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.[10] In 2013, a 1963 serigraph titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) sold for $105 million. In 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million, which is the highest price paid at auction for a work by an American artist.
He's the most important American artist of the second half of the 20th century.
He's now widely regarded as the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century.
There was no huger reputation than Warhol's in the art of the sixties, and in late-twentieth-century art there was no more important decade than the sixties. Much of the art that has followed, in the United States, is unthinkable without him (...)
Schaffner-1999
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