Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was an American artist, a leading figure of the Pop Art movement. ​Using a variety of media materials from photographs up to computer-generated art, Warhol's works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity, culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s.
Emerging from the poverty and obscurity of an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh, Warhol became a charismatic magnet for bohemian New York. In 1960, he began to produce his first canvases depicting Popeye and Dick Tracy. After Marilyn Monroe’s death in August 1962, he started working from snapshots of the star’s already legendary face, which had been widely distributed by the world’s press. His choice of subjects clearly relates to an obsession with demise – his Marilyns, his Ten Lizies (created when the actress Elizabeth Taylor was seriously ill), and also his Elvis. Part of the “Death and Disaster” series, Andy Warhol´s Marilyn Monroes are undoubtedly iconic portraits of our era, exploring as they do the artist’s fascination for images of death and beauty. He worked across many media as a painter, printmaker, illustrator, film-maker, and writer, and produced many world-famous series. Andy Warhol Flower´s series reinterprets a traditional motif spanning the history of art, while Warhol´s Cambell´s Soup Can series represents the mass-produced, printed advertisements that inspired him since his childhood. Towards the end of 1962, the artist turned to the photo-silkscreen process, which became his signature medium. From 1963 up until 1968, the year in which he was shot, Warhol – surrounded by assistants in his studio The Factory – took the industrial character of his work to its climax. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions and books, as well as feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Andy Warhol´s artworks are some of the most influential works of art of the second half of the twentieth century, representing the most recognizable images ever produced.

Andy Warhol

Obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and mechanical reproduction, Pop artist Andy Warhol created some of the 20th century’s most iconic images.

Although best known for his silkscreens, Andy Warhol was also an excellent draughtsman and drawing was a constant part of his artistic practice. Warhol’s big break stemmed from an assignment to illustrate shoes for a feature in Glamour magazine in 1950. Impressed by his sketches, the magazine awarded him six additional pages and mistakenly credited “Drawings by Warhol”, a misprint that lead young Andy to drop the “a” from his last name - the American artist was born Andrew Warhola in 1928. A pivotal turning point in Warhol’s career was his position as an illustrator for the popular shoe manufacturer I. Miller, who hired the young artist to created campaign advertisement for the Sunday edition of the New York Times. These bold and colourful visual depictions often incorporated painting, drawing, collage and text. These advertisements eradicated the barrier between illustrated and fine art.

In 1956 Warhol began a series of fantasy footwear conveyed the personalities of figures he admired, including fashionable socialites and magazine editors, as well as actors, actresses and authors. Much like Warhol’s successive works, these early shoe collages represent the beginning of the artist’s fascination with fame and his focus on celebrity as subject matter. As confessed fan of Christmas, Warhol took up this theme and also drew imaginative, cheerful ironic 'Christmas Shoes' in various shapes and of bright colors.

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