Mao Zedong

Andy Warhol is one of the most important artists of the 20th century and of Pop Art.

Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA. His real name was Andrew Warhola. He grew up in a poor family of Czech immigrants. He lost his father at the age of 14.

Between 1945 and 1948 Andy trained at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he discovered advertising.

In 1949, he moved to New York, a city that inspired him greatly. He started a career as an advertising designer, working for magazines such as Vogue, Glamour and The New Yorker. He quickly made a name for himself and called himself "Andy Warhol".

In 1960, Andy Warhol produced, among other things, paintings. However, he momentarily abandoned painting in order to design silkscreen prints on consumer society. It was when he discovered an exhibition of Roy Lichtenstein at the gallery Leo Castelli that Andy Warhol turned to this technique. The cans of Campbell's soup and Coca-Cola bottles became the stars of his works.

In 1962, he exhibited 32 "Campbell's Soup cans" in a New York gallery. Andy Warhol seeks to point the finger at the American consumer society and the standardisation of products. His works quickly met with great success and he participated in the first Pop Art exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery.

Andy Warhol revisits the photos of stars in his serigraphs: Marylin Monroe, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor. In his time, Warhol was the king of Pop Art and the star of the New York underground scene. He was gifted with a very good business sense. In 1963, he formed a battalion of assistants, to which he delegated the mass production of his creations. A real revolution in the world of art.

In January 1964, Andy Warhol moved into his famous Factory, on the fifth floor of 231 East on New York's 47th Street, an industrial premises that became his studio. The place, whose walls are covered with aluminium foil, becomes the centre of underground life in New York. This factory was then a place where he produced a large quantity of his works. With his Factory, he "industrialized" art. It was in this place that Warhol made his first films. In 1965, he became the producer of the rock band The Velvet Underground.

In 1967, Andy Warhol is still in full glory. Artists gravitate around his Factory. He inevitably causes disappointment by turning down projects. It is the case of Valerie Solanas, she entrusts a script to Andy Warhol, who does not follow up. In June 1968, she shot Warhol three times, piercing his lung, spleen, stomach, liver and oesophagus. Warhol managed to survive, but was condemned to spend the rest of his life wearing a medical corset. He abandoned the collective adventure of the Factory to turn to painting, painting portraits of Mao Zedong, Mick Jagger and Calvin Klein, before moving on to more abstract works. 

During the 1980s, he became close to Jean-Michel Basquiat and the singer Lou Reed. Successfully operated on his gall bladder the day before, the genius of Pop Art died in his sleep on February 22, 1987 at the age of 58. 

Today, Andy Warhol is considered one of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century.