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.

Alongside Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol is one of the great 20th Century master of the self-portrait. Warhol often resorted to make-up, wigs and even plastic surgery to disguise himself. This makes the self-portrait even more intriguing and engaging as viewers try to deconstruct the real Andy Warhol behind the shy and witty public persona.
“Self Portrait, Blue” is based on a four-panel acrylic silk-screen in blue hues commissioned by Detroit collector Florence Barron in 1963, after the legendary dealer Ivan Karp, suggested to Warhol "You know, people want to see you. Your looks are responsible for a certain part of your fame - they feed the imagination". Barron had initially been taken to Warhol's studio to discuss the commission of her own portrait. However, in a brilliant reversal of the typical artist-patron relationship, Barron proposed instead that she would commission Warhol to paint his portrait for her - and to turn the icon-making apparatus of his Pop art vision on himself. Created at the prime of Warhol’s career, this self-portrait publicly documents, his self-transformation from commercial artist into the “Pope of Pop”.

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“ When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don’t have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes – they’re not part of the good picture you want „

—Andy Warhol