Andy Warhol Biography: Andrew Warhola, who was born on August 6, 1928, was New York’s most accomplished and well-paid commercial illustrator before he began making art for galleries. His screen-printed images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, and dramatic newspaper articles quickly became synonymous with Pop art. From the obscurity and poverty of an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh, he ascended to become a captivating magnet for bohemian New York and eventually a member of High Society. According to many, his success exemplifies one of Pop art’s goals: bringing common styles and subjects into the exclusive salons of fine art. Today, we commemorate the achievements of this well-known icon.
Andy Warhol Birthday
Andy Warhol was born in a working-class neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 6, 1928, to Czechoslovak immigrant parents Ondrej and Ulja (Julia) Warhola. John and Paul were his elder siblings. Andy was an intelligent and creative youth. His mother, a recreational artist herself, encouraged his artistic interests by giving him his first camera at age nine. Warhol was known to suffer from a neurological disorder that kept him confined to his home for extended periods, during which he would listen to the radio and collect images of movie stars to place around his bed. He later stated that his early exposure to current events influenced his interest in contemporary culture and celebrities. When he was 14 years old, his father died, leaving the family money to be used solely for one of the brothers’ college education. The family believed that Andy would benefit most from attending college.
After graduating from high school at age 16 in 1945, Warhol enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). 1949, shortly after graduation, he moved to New York City to work as a commercial illustrator. His first assignment was for “Glamour Magazine,” where he penned an article titled “Success is a Job in New York.” Warhol maintained a prosperous commercial illustration career throughout the 1950s. 1952 marked his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in New York, with Fifteen Drawings Based on Truman Capote’s Writings. In 1956, he participated in his first group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where he also exhibited at a number of other locations. Warhol was inspired to extend his artistic experimentation by the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two new artists on the rise. He launched his most productive period in September 1960, after relocating to a townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 1342 Lexington Avenue. In his previous flat, which he shared with his mother, there was no designated studio space, but he now has ample space to work. In 1962, he proposed to the Department of Real Estate to rent an adjacent decommissioned fire station on East 87th Street for $150 per month. He was permitted permission to operate this room until 1964 alongside his Lexington Avenue location.
In keeping with the theme of advertisements and comic strips, the majority of his paintings from the early 1960s were based on printed media and graphic design illustrations. Warhol utilised an opaque projector to extend the images onto a large canvas on the wall in order to create his large-scale graphic paintings. He would then define the image with paint directly on the canvas, without a pencil sketch underneath. Consequently, Warhol’s early 1961 works are frequently more painterly. In late 1961, he launched his Campbell’s Soup Can paintings. The majority of the images in the series were created by projecting source photographs onto canvas, tracing them with a pencil, and then painting over them. Warhol was able to conceal the preponderance of the artist’s hands using this technique.
Warhol began experimenting with silkscreening in 1962. The stencil method involved transferring an image onto a permeable screen and then applying paint or ink with a rubber squeegee. This was another method of painting while erasing traces of his hand; similar to the stencil procedures he used to create the Campbell’s Soup Can images, this allowed him to duplicate the motif multiple times across the same image, resulting in a serial image resembling mass production. His early silkscreen paintings were influenced by the front and back of dollar bills, and he went on to create several series of depictions of various consumer products and commercial items using this technique. In the autumn of 1962, he began producing photo-silkscreen works, which involved the duplication of an image onto porous silkscreens. Baseball (1962) was his first, and his subsequent works frequently used common or horrifying images collected from tabloid newspaper photographs of vehicle collisions and civil rights demonstrations, as well as money and consumer goods. The renowned portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor demonstrate that Warhol’s fascination with Hollywood lasted his entire existence. He also experimented with installations, most notably at New York’s Stable Gallery in 1964, where he re-created Brillo boxes in their original dimensions and then screen-printed their label designs onto plywood blocks. In 1963, Warhol began experimenting with film to further his exploration of various mediums.
After an assassination attempt by his companion and radical feminist Valerie Solanas in 1968, he decided to separate himself from his unconventional entourage. This marked the conclusion of the Factory scene of the 1960s. During the majority of the 1970s, Warhol’s work consisted primarily of commissioned portraits based on Polaroid photographs. The most notable exception is his Mao series, which was created in response to President Richard Nixon’s visit to China. Critics viewed Warhol as exploiting his artistic talent, and his later phases as a period of decline, because his portraits lacked the aesthetic allure and commercial viability of his earlier works. Warhol, on the other hand, viewed financial achievement as an essential objective.
Andy Warhol Net Worth, Height
Name | Andrew Warhola |
Nickname | Drella, Andy |
Birth date | August 6, 1928 |
Death date | February 22, 1987 (age 58) |
Zodiac Sign | Leo |
Height | 5′ 10″ |
Net Worth | $220 million |
Andy Warhol Biography: 5 SURPRISE FACTS
The ‘Factory’ by Andy Warhol is well-known, but between 1962 and 1984, his New York City studio was moved three times.
Valeria Jean Solanas, a radical feminist, entered the Factory on June 3, 1968, and shot Andy Warhol; she later turned herself in and was diagnosed with paranoid Schizophrenia.
Following his near-death experience in 1968, he began the laborious task of transcribing ordinary, semi-important, and entirely unimportant details from his life.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established to encourage the growth and development of the visual arts.
Frequent visitors to his Factory, drag queens were an integral part of his art juggernaut.