Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola) was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He is considered by many as the most influential American artist of the second half of the 20th century. Warhol's signature style used commercial silkscreening techniques to create identical, mass produced images on canvas, then variations in color to give each print of an edition a different look.

Warhol first applied his silkscreen techniques as a commercial artist in the 1950s. Window displays of a Fifth Avenue department store featured his comicbook superhero images. His initial forays into the POP ART came in the early 1960s with his Coca-Cola Bottles (1962) and sculptures of Brillo Boxes (1964), which brought worldwide recognition. Condemned as consumerism by many critics, his work was enthusiastically accepted in Europe, Australia and Japan. Later in the 1960s, Warhol produced a series of motion pictures dealing with such concepts as time, boredom and repetition.

Warhol's generally sunny and upbeat artwork turned to more serious subjects in his images of Jacqueline Kennedy mourning the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and his "Birmingham Race Riot" (1964). His "Endangered Species" prints (1983) including "Pine Barrens Tree Frog," the "Orangutan" and the "Bald Eagle," inspired concern, not at the subjects themselves, but at their possible absence.

Warhol died in New York on February 27, 1987 after a gallbladder operation. He had set, and then stretched the boundaries of POP ART. Warhol's depictions of everything from Campbell Soup Cans to the faces of celebrities provide an often revealing commentary on contemporary American society.