BORN 1928 - 1987, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, USA

Andy Warhol was a writer, philosopher, filmmaker and artist whose portraits of soup cans, celebrities and the social scene made him the best-known figure of the POP ART movement. Warhol gained success as a commercial artist in NY, doing ads and illustrations. He pioneered the development of the process whereby an enlarged photographic image is transferred to a silk screen, then placed on a canvas and inked from the back. This technique enabled him to produce the series of mass-media images - repetitive, yet with slight variations - that he began in 1962. These, incorporating such items as Campbell's Soup cans, dollar bills, Coca-Cola bottles, and the faces of celebrities, can be taken as comments on the banality, harshness, and ambiguity of American culture. The implications of his work have proved essential to the postmodernist movement.

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS: Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Art Institute of Chicago; Guggenheim Museum, New York City; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Art Institute of Chicago; Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Norway; Beyeler Foundation Collection, Switzerland; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy; GAM - Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Kunst Indeks Danmark, Denmark; Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany; Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany; Museum Abteiberg, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C; Palazzo Forti, Verona; Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Randers Kunstmuseum, Denmark; S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst), Ghent, Belgium; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; State Museums of Berlin, Germany; Tate Gallery, London; Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada.