ANDY WARHOL

Pop Artist

An unusual character, an icon artist associated with the 1960's pop culture, and the author of the idea that, "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes". Warhol was the most influential artist of his time, and by far the biggest celebrity of the art world. His Pop Art movement was an attempt to move the abstract art world from the elite to the common ordinary people. He introduced the commercial silkscreening process to the fine arts, with his Campbell Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe portraits as probably his most famous and enduring works. He was also well known for use of repitition, using the same image many times in the same work.

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh on August 6, 1928, his real name Andrew Warhola. His family immigrated from Slovakia, where they have started a museum to honor Warhol and his parents. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University).He was a very successful commercial illustrator in New York in the 1950's. His first showing of his original artwork was in 1952 at the Hugo Gallery. Warhol began making silkscreen paintings with unusual, pop images, and began exhibiting them in 1962. Warhol's bold and striking paintings became extremely popular as an image of the times.

Warhol also got into movie making with some 16mm films which became cult classics, such as Chelsea Girls. In 1968, he was seriously injured when Valerie Solanis shot him in his studio. In the 1970's and 1980's, he continued his main interest in painting, while branching out into new challenges such as magazine publishing and television shows.

Warhol died on February 22, 1987 after undergoing a routine gall bladder operation, and was buried in Pittsburgh. The largest museum dedicated to one artist is The Warhol Museum located in Pittsburgh.