Medium/Media

Drawing:   Warhol started as a Commercial Illustrator he was producing drawings in blotted ink style for advertising and magazine articles. His early works that are best known are his drawings of shoes.

Sculpture:  Warhol had some famous Statues but Brillo Boxes and Heinz Boxes are the most famous.  Silkscreen ink on wood there are replicas of the large cardboard boxes used to hold 24 packages of Brillo soap pads

Audio:  Warhol liked to carry a recorder and he would just record everything everybody said or did.

Time Capsules: It was 1973 when Warhol started to save ephemera all his daily life correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs childhood objects, used plane tickets some food items that were sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed as time capsules. When he died the collection of these dated time capsules was 600. The boxes are hosed in the Andy Warhol Museum.

Television: Warhol dreamed about a television special about a favourite subject of his, Nothing, he wanted to call it The Nothing Special. Later Warhol did create two cable shows, Andy Warhol’s TV. in 1982 and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen minutes (based on his famous fifteen minutes of fame quotation) these shows were produced for MTV in 1986. Warhol also made regular guest appearances on The Love Boat, and he also made TV, commercials for restaurants in New York City.

Fashion: Warhol also liked to put his touch on fashion he did some silk screening on dresses and he also painted shoes, he also had a short sub career as a catwalk model and wrote books on fashion.

Photography: Warhol was an accomplished photographer he had taken an enormous amount of photographs of visitors to the factory and friends.

“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks it would be a good idea to give them.” – Andy Warhol

Art Mentors

Warhol created his own style without the influence of others and piloted the artistic style of pop art. His work is not defined by works of others but rather the media, culture and celebrities of his time period. 

Life and Career Defining Moments

     Warhol had numerous artistic passions; he was a painter, photographer, sculpture, print maker, and film maker. Later he became the leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator (graphic artist), Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. It was in 1952 when Warhol debuted his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery, which featured 15 drawings he created based on writing the writing of Truman Capote.

During the 1960’s is when Warhol began making painting of iconic American objects like Marilyn Monroe. The 1960’s were also very defining for Warhol in the sense that he opened his studio called ‘The Factory’ where he gathered artists, musicians, writers, and underground celebrities. In this decade he also painted his first works based on comics and advertisement, he did this by enlarging and projecting the images onto a canvas where he could then paint them. He created icons out of icons.

Another pivotal moment was the 1964 exhibit ‘The American Supermarket’, this exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the question of ‘what is art?’. Though this decade held much success for Warhol is also came with its dangers; in 1968 Valerie Solanas shot him. Warhol’s work was not always appreciated in all galleries; his art was too commercial in some people’s opinion. Some of his work for the times (1960’s) would have been considered shocking, rude, and disgusting.

The 70’s and 80’s were less exciting than his booming 60’s. Warhol commissioned celebrities for portraits, founded ‘Interview’ magazine, and published a book ‘Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and back again)’. In 1982 Warhol died from sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia after having a routine gallbladder surgery. The Andy Warhol Museum in the city of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania holds an extensive permanent collection of art archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to one single artist.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA

DATE OF BIRTH: August 6, 1928

DATE OF DEATH: February 22, 1987

  Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola) was born in Pittsburgh, he was one of four children, though one of his siblings died before the family moved from Slovakia to America. Warhol’s father moved to the U.S. in 1914 and his mother joined him in 1921. Andy’s father was a coal miner. The family lived at 55 Beelen St. then at 3252 Dawson St. in Pittsburgh. Warhol had two older brothers, Paul the oldest who was born in Slovakia; Jẚn was born in Pittsburgh.

While in grade three Warhol came down with Sydenham’s chorea (also known as St. Vitus’ dance) which is a nervous system disease that causes the person to have involuntary movement of the extremities. It is believed to be a complication of Scarlett fever which causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. From this traumatic childhood experience Andy became a hypochondriac with a fear of doctors and hospitals.  When he was a child he was often bedridden and became an outcast at school, because of this he used celebrity magazines and comics as an escape. While often confined to his bed he drew and listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed.  Warhol later stated that this time in his life was very important in the development of his personality and skill-set and preferences. During his college years Andy tried to create a new persona for himself signing greeting cards as “André”, and later he started dropping the ‘a’ from his last name Warhola. It was when Warhol was just thirteen his father was killed in an accident.

As a teenager he graduated from Schenley High School in 1945, after high school he intended to study art education at the University of Pittsburgh in hopes of becoming an art teacher. Those plans changed and he enrolled at Carnegie Institute of Technology to pursue a career as a commercial illustrator, and he majored in pictorial design. Warhol was the only member of his family to attend college. In 1949 Warhol earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. After graduation he moved to New York where his life as a pop artist we know today would soon begin.