Andy Warhol 1928-1987

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was an American artist whose incisive embrace of consumer culture and celebrity imagery helped define the visual language of the postwar era. By drawing from advertising, mass media, and everyday commodities, he created some of the most enduring icons of twentieth-century art and reshaped the boundary between commercial imagery and fine art.

Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh to Slovak immigrant parents, Warhol studied pictorial design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before moving to New York in 1949. He first gained prominence as a successful commercial illustrator for major magazines, while also exhibiting his early drawings and paintings.

Warhol’s shift to Pop Art in the early 1960s, marked by works like Campbell’s Soup Cans and his serial portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, cemented his international reputation. In 1963 he founded the Factory, a legendary studio and cultural hub where he produced avant-garde films, launched Interview magazine, and collaborated with his circle of “Superstars.”

After surviving an assassination attempt in 1968, Warhol continued to expand his practice, exploring abstraction in series such as the Oxidations, Rorschachs, and Camouflages, and later revisiting art-historical subjects including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. In the 1980s he worked prolifically across media and collaborated with emerging artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Warhol died in 1987. His fusion of popular culture, mass production, and artistic invention permanently altered the course of contemporary art and remains a defining force in global visual culture.