About the Artist

The American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburg in 1928. Upon earning his BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, he moved to New York to work as a commercial artist.

That year, Glamour Magazine gave him his first big break, asking him to illustrate a feature entitled "Success is a Job in New York". The magazine accidentally credited the work to Andy Warhol (no "a"). From then on, he signed his work in that manner, continuing to create ads and illustrations. Fine art works stemming from comic strips and advertisements were a natural outgrowth of his work as a commercial artist and soon become his hallmark.

Considered a founder and major figure of the Pop Art movement, Warhol pioneered the development of a new silkscreen process that enabled him to produce the series of repetitive mass-media issues that he began in 1962. He used images of celebrities, Campbell's Soup cans, flowers and other common subjects in such a way as to be repetitive and yet at the same time, showed variations in light and color.  It is said that this was his comment on the banality and ambiguity of American culture.

In the 1960's, Warhol made a series of experimental films, starting working with a rock band called the Velvet Underground and also produced a successful periodical titled "Interview". In 1975, he published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. He continued to paint portraits until 1987, when he died following a gallbladder operation.