Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987)
The American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 in Pittsburgh. He is considered a founder and major figure of the POP ART movement. He got his first break in August 1949, when Glamour Magazine wanted him to illustrate a feature entitled “Success is a Job in New York”. But by accident the credit read “Drawings by Andy Warhol” and that’s how Andy dropped the “a” in his last name. He continued doing ads and illustrations and by 1955 he was the most successful and imitated commercial artist in New York. In 1960 he produced the first of his paintings depicting enlarged comic strip images – such as Popeye and Superman – initially for use in a window display. Warhol pioneered the development of the process whereby an enlarged photographic image is transferred to a silk screen that is then placed on a canvas and inked from the back. Each Warhol silkscreen used this technique that enabled him to produce the series of mass-media images – repetitive, yet with slight variations – that he began in 1962. These iconic Andy Warhol prints, 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. Later in the 1960s, Warhol made a series of experimental films dealing with such ideas as time, boredom, and repetition; they include Sleep (1963), Empire (1964), and The Chelsea Girls (1966). In 1965 he started working with a rockband called “The Velvet Underground” formed by Lou Reed and John Cale. Andy introduced them to the model and moviestar Nico and she sang on their debut album from 1967 “The Velvet Underground and Nico”. Andy would travel around the country, not only with The Velvets, but also with superstar of the year Edie Sedgwick and the lightshow “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable”.