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 Marilyns. 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. The attack was nearly fatal.
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 his work
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.
The Andy Warhol Museum
opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
in May 1994. |
