This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Andy Warhol, whose name is synonymous with Pop Art, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He studied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1945 to 1949 and then went to New York City where he became an illustrator until 1960 when he began making paintings based on comic strip characters such as Popeye, Dick Tracy, and Superman.
He turned from the prevailing abstract-expressionist styles and the emphasis on the artist's emotion to a hard-line realism, using many common images associated with the popular media such as a Campbell Soup can or a Coca-Cola bottle or Brillo pad. The first images were handpainted, but many were reproduced with a silk-screen process. He became the "first artist to utlize the screenprint medium to elevate both common and famous photographic images from popular culture to fine art status." (Falk Vol III, p. 3465)
In May, 1999, "ARTNews" magazine named him one of the twenty-five most influential artists-ever. About him, it was written: . . . "it all began with the first Campbell's soup can in 1962. . . With this simple image, the concepts of appropriation and commidification were let loose for good. Warhol's celebration of his screen sirens, hustler hunks, and cafe-society wanna-bees . . .had an equally dramatic effect."
In 1964, Warhol began making sculpture, often with labels from supermarkets, and in the 1970s, he turned to portraits, some of the most famous being Jackie Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Mao Tse Tung, and Marilyn Monroe. These images reflected his fascination with the topic of death, something he carried into a series called "Death and Disaster," that included depictions of car crashes and gang warfare. Many celebrities and socialites regarded it as a notch up the ladder of recognition to be painted by Warhol.
He died in New York City in 1987 from gall bladder surgery that no one expected to be complicated.
Source:
Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Art"
Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"
ArtNews, May 1999 |
Biography from Art Cellar Exchange:
| Biography Number One
Andy Warhol began his career as a commercial illustrator, developing ads for the I. Miller Department store in New York. His first exhibition was in 1962, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, which included all 32 of his Campbell's Soup Can renditions.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928 as Andrew Warhola, Andy Warhol came to represent more than just the American condition. He became pivotal in the evolution of artistic production in relationship to mainstream mass-produced culture and commercialism. The founder and most influential figure of the Pop Art movement, Warhol received his training in graphic design from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. He then moved to New York City to begin his career as a commercial artist where he gained phenomenal success. By 1955, Warhol was the most successful and most-influential commercial artist in New York.
His career took flight when he produced the first of his window displays using enlarged comic strip images. Characters such as Superman and Popeye were among the popular images he incorporated into designer fashion. Needless to say, his department store windows drew a lot of attention, and Warhol garnered a reputation for the extreme. One of Warhol's most important developments was his use of enlarged photographic images which were silk screened directly onto canvas and/or paper. This technique enabled him to produce quickly and cheaply a series of mass-media images that he marketed to the public. Iconographic objects such as Soup Cans, U.S. Dollar Bills, Coca-Cola Bottles, as well as the various faces of celebrities and politicians became highly sought after by art aficionados.
In the late 1960s, Warhol experimented with the medium of film exploring such rhetorical topics as time, boredom, and repetition. He founded inter/VIEW magazine in 1969 (later changed to Interview in 1971), published 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again' and continued to produce silkscreens until his death in 1987.--Karen Daniels, Art Cellar Exchange
Biography Number Two:
California epitomizes consumer culture: movie stars, convertible cars and plastic surgery are commonplace in the land of sun and fun. Here, everyone is looking for their 15 minutes of fame. As the leader of the Pop Art movement, a style of art beginning in the 1950s which simultaneously celebrated and satirically examined popular culture, Andy Warhol's work explored issues that are applicable in Southern California today.
Warhol began his career as an illustrator for advertising agencies and magazines, which may account for the focus and fascination that he had for objects of popular culture later in his career. One of Warhol's first major illustrations was of a grouping of shoes for Glamour Magazine. This subject matter would appear many times in his subsequent work, including two portfolios of shoes that he created in 1980.
Although Warhol achieved his first taste of success in New York as a commercial artist, his first solo Pop exhibition was on the West Coast. In 1962, the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles displayed all 32 of his now famous Campbell's Soup Can images. It was also around this time that his studio, which he called The Factory, began gaining notoriety.Captivated by the uniformity and abundance of consumer products in the United States, Warhol mimicked their repetitive nature in his depiction of Campbell's soup cans, green stamps, and Coke bottles.
This fascination with images in series bled into his all aspects of Warhol's art production. In his studio, he had many assistants who participated in the mass production of prints, posters and paintings that he designed. Most frequently employing the technique of silkscreen printing, Warhol used this method because it made his images identical and easy to proliferate.The Factory was also used as an experimental film studio where Warhol produced over 300 independent films. This studio also became a popular hangout and party destination for celebrities, many of whom became the subject matter of his artwork.
This close proximity to fame rubbed off on the artist and ironically, he himself became an object of popular culture. In 1987, Warhol's 15 minutes were tragically cut short. The artist died on February 22, 1987 from complications following an emergency gall bladder surgery.
--Amy Kleppinger, Art Cellar Exchange, http://www.artcellarexchange.com
Biography Number Three
Andy Warhol insisted that he was not a "real artist." He began his career as a commercial illustrator, commissioned to do work for Glamour Magazine, I. Miller shoes and many other New York businesses before he ever exhibited his work in a gallery setting. What Warhol failed to realize, however, is that in many ways he was the most important kind of "real artist." He achieved the ultimate goal of any true artist: to accurately and instinctively capture the essence of the time and place in which he lived.
More than any other artist of his era, Andy Warhol served as a cultural anthropologist, recording the fascinating and ever-changing American culture that existed in the second half of the 20th century.Born Andrew Warhola to immigrant parents near Pittsburgh in 1928, Andy showed artistic talent at a young age. As a sickly child, he was often bedridden and would draw and color for hours on end.
Following high school graduation, Warhol attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology and later moved to New York City to pursue his artistic career. Although Warhol often tried to hide his simple origins it is perhaps the early years of his life, devoid of glamour and full of illness, that spurred his obsession with beauty and magnificence.
Warhol began making in screenprints in the late 1960s, a medium that would eventually become his primarily vehicle for artistic expression. More than any other medium available at the time, screenprinting was the perfect technique for capturing the essence of Warhol's work. The ability of a screenprint to be identically reproduced became an essential part of the way Warhol's art reflected life at that time. The post-war abundance that middle class America experienced in the 50s and 60s created a level of consumption and also homogenization that had never been seen before. Even Warhol's studio, which he called "The Factory," paid homage to the mechanization of other products of the day. By using a series of assistants, Warhol likened the production of his art to the production of standard household goods.
Against all odds, Andy became as famous as the icons that he depicted in his artwork. His careful and unintentional documentation allows us the opportunity to reflect on one of the most pivotal times in American history. Through his images we see what we were, what we wanted and who we are in the present. Today, more than ever, we understand the importance of what he had to say.
--Amy Kleppinger, Art Cellar Exchange, http://www.artcellarexchange.com |
Biography from Rogallery.com:
|  1928 Born in Pittsburgh, PA
1945 - 1949 Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. Major: Pictural Design.
1962 Founded the Factory
1969 Founded Interview Magazine
1987 Died in New York, NY
Andy Warhol began his career as a commercial illustrator, developing ads for the I. Miller Department store in New York. His first exhibition was in 1962, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, which included all 32 of his Campbell's Soup Can renditions.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928 as Andrew Warhola, Andy Warhol came to represent more than just the American condition. He became pivotal in the evolution of artistic production in relationship to mainstream mass-produced culture and commercialism. The founder and most influential figure of the Pop Art movement, Warhol received his training in graphic design from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. He then moved to New York City to begin his career as a commercial artist where he gained phenomenal success. By 1955, Warhol was the most successful and most-influential commercial artist in New York.
His career took flight when he produced the first of his window displays using enlarged comic strip images. Characters such as Superman and Popeye were among the popular images he incorporated into designer fashion. Needless to say, his department store windows drew a lot of attention, and Warhol garnered a reputation for the extreme. One of Warhol's most important developments was his use of enlarged photographic images which were silk screened directly onto canvas and/or paper. This technique enabled him to produce quickly and cheaply a series of mass-media images that he marketed to the public. Iconographic objects such as Soup Cans, U.S. Dollar Bills, Coca-Cola Bottles, as well as the various faces of celebrities and politicians became highly sought after by art aficionados.
In the late 1960s, Warhol experimented with the medium of film exploring such rhetorical topics as time, boredom, and repetition. He founded inter/VIEW magazine in 1969 (later changed to Interview in 1971), published 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again' and continued to produce silkscreens until his death in 1987.
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Selected Exhibitions
2006 Warhol's World, Hauser & Wirth, London
2006 Man's Best Friend, Lococo Fine Art, St. Louis, MO
2006 Andy Warhol: Vanishing Animals, Medium SARL, Gustavia, St. Barthelemy
2005 Andy Warhol Self-Portraits, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
2004 Andy Warhol - Selbstportraits, Sprengel Museum, Hannover
2004 Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz
2004 The Late Andy Warhol - The Late Work, museum kunst palast, Dusseldorf
2004 Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures, Kunstwerke, Berlin
2004 Andy Warhol, Anton Kern Gallery, New York
2004 Andy Warhol - LATE PAINTINGS, Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
2003 Andy Warhol - The Time Capsules, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
2003 Warhol - Screen Tests, Museum of Modern Art, New York
2001 Retrospective, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
1999 Photography, The Andy Warhol Museum, Hamburg, Kunsthalle, travelled to Pittsburgh,
1998 Reframing Andy Warhol: Constructing American Myths, Heroes and Cultural Icons, University Art Gallery, Maryland
1993 Andy Warhol: Abstract, Basel, Kunsthalle, travelled to Vienna, Östereichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst; Valencia, IVAM,
1992 Andy Warhol Polaroids 1971 - 1986, New York, Pace/MacGill Gallery, travelled to London, Anthony d'Offay; Paris, Durand-Dessert,
1991 Andy Warhol's Video and Television, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1990 Andy Warhol: Films, IVAM, Valencia
1990 Andy Warhol: Cars-The Last Pictures, Kunstmuseum, Berne
1990 The Prints of Andy Warhol, Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, New York
1989 Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, Hayward Gallery, London
1989 Andy Warhol: Shadow Paintings, Gagosian Gallery, New York
1976 Venice Biennale
1970 Museum of Contempary Art, Chicago
1970 Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
1970 Musée d´Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
1970 Museum of Art, Pasadena, CA, toured the US
1969 Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
1968 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
1968 Moderna Museet, Stockholm
1967 Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne
1967 Ileana Sonnabend, Paris
1966 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
1966 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
1965 Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
1964 Ileana Sonnabend, Paris
1964 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
1964 Stable Gallery, New York
1963 Fetus Gallery, Los Angeles
1962 Fetus Gallery, Los Angeles
1952 Andy Warhol: Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote, Hugo Gallery, New York |
Biography from Woodward Gallery:
|  An American painter, graphic artist, film maker, Andy Warhol settled in New York in 1949, and in the 1950’s was a successful commercial artist (his shoe advertisements won a medal in 1957). In 1962, he achieved sudden notoriety with exhibited stencilled pictures of Campbell’s Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles. Warhol was soon the most controversial figure in American Pop art and a brilliant self promoter.
By 1959, he had achieved such success as a graphic illustrator that Warhol ambitiously wanted to move into fine art and conquer it as well. He, perhaps predestined to gain the kind of recognition and respect of a serious fine artist, said: “I want to be Matisse!”
The silkscreen process that he favored allowed infinite replication. He was opposed to the concept of a work of art as a piece of craftsmanship, handmade for the collector and expressing the personality of the artist. Warhol wanted everybody to think alike and to be a “machine”. In keeping with this outlook, he used clippings of dehumanizing illustrations from the mass media, turned out his work like a manufacturer, and called his studio “The Factory”.
Warhol’s work is in permanent museum collections around the world. The Warhol Museum was opened in Pittsburgh in 1994 under the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh endowment.
Warhol’s 'fifteen minutes of fame' has long continued after his death. In 2002, his art was even further appreciated in the traveling exhibition "Andy Warhol: Retrospective" which was in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; The Tate Museum, London; and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, CA. The official Catalogue Raisonnae compiling all known Andy Warhol paintings is being issued in 12 parts with the first edition completed and distributed in 2002. In August 2003, The United States Postal Service honored the artist by unveiling a first class Warhol Self-Portrait stamp.
In 2008 Warhol surpassed Picasso as having the most sales of an artist's works internationally. |
Biography from AC Fine Art:
|  Throughout the 1950s, Andy Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a
commercial artist, winning several commendations from the Art Director's Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In these early years, he shortened his name to "Warhol".
In 1952, the artist had his first individual show at the Hugo Gallery, exhibiting Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. His work was exhibited in several other venues during the 1950s, including his first group show at The Museum of Modern Art in 1956.
The 1960s was an extremely prolific decade for Warhol. Appropriating
images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art, such as the Campbell's Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyn Monroe screenprints. In addition to painting, Warhol made several 16mm films, which have become underground classics such as "Chelsea Girls", "Empire" and "Blow Job".
In 1968, Valerie Solanis, founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for
Cutting Up Men) walked into Warhol's studio, known as the Factory, and shot the artist three times in the chest. Doctors had to perform a risky procedure to stop his heart from stopping and he nearly died. |
Biography from Fineartgasm.com:
| Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928. In 1945, he entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. Upon graduation, Warhol moved to New York where he found steady work as a commercial artist working for several magazines including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker.
The 1960s was an extremely prolific decade for Warhol. He created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art, such as the Campbell's Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyns.
At the start of the 1970s, Warhol began publishing Interview magazine, and renewed his focus on painting. Works created in this decade include Maos, Skulls, Hammer and Sickles, Torsos and Shadows and many commissioned portraits. Firmly established as a major 20th-century artist and international celebrity, Warhol exhibited his work extensively in museums and galleries around the world. |
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