Andy Warhol was a leading figure in the pop art movement in America in the second half of the 20th century.
1962 announced Andy Warhol’s dramatic entry into the art world. In the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles he exhibited “Campbell’s Soup Cans”, each one featuring a different variety of the company’s 32 soups. He had previously worked as a commercial illustrator and had hand-painted each canvas of the cans of soup. In other works that are now iconic he portrayed legendary actress Marilyn Monroe, whose recent suicide had sent shockwaves through American popular culture.
New York magazine said of Warhol “images he leaves will be the permanent record of America in the sixties.”
He launched his own magazine, Interview, in 1969, and in the years that followed he circulated in the world of celebrity he had long represented in his art. Two years after his death in 1987, MoMA mounted its first retrospective of his work.
Since then, Warhol’s stature has only grown.
