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Andy Warhol: Biography
Andy Warhol was born on 1928 to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents at Pittsburgh. In 1954 he left school with a high school diploma. Between 1945 and 1949 he studied pictorial design and art history, sociology and psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh. He met Philip Pearlstein and moved to New York with him in 1949. he worked for "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar", did window displays for Bonwit Teller and his first advertisements for the I.Miller shoe company. In 1952 he had his first one - man exhibition at the Hugo Gallery, NY. He designed stage sets, dyed his hair straw - blond and moved into a house in Lexington Avenue with his mother and several cats. In 1954 he was in a collective exhibition at the Loft Gallery, NY. In 1956 he had an individual exhibition of his drawings for "Boy Book" at the Bodley Gallery, and his "Gloden Shoes" were exhibited in Madison Avenue. He traveled in Europe and Asia. In 1960 he made his first pictures based on comic strips and company trade names. In 1962 he produced his silkscreen prints on canvas of dollar notes, Campbell's Soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, etc. He was also included in the exhibition "The New Realists" at the Sidney Janis Gallery, NY, and started his series of disaster pictures: "Car Crash", "Suicide" and "Electric Chair". Between 1962 and 1964 he produced over 2000 pictures form his Factory. In 1963 he made the films "Sleep" (6 hours long) and "Empire" (8 hours long). In 1964 his "Flower" pictures were exhibited at the Galerie Sonnabend, Paris. He was also forced for political reasons to paint over his "Thirteen Most Wanted Men" which he attached to the wall of the NY State Pavilion for the World's Fair in NY. He made his first sculptures with affixed silkscreen prints of company cartoons. In 1965 he had an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Between 1966-68 he made several films with the band Velvet Underground. His "Cow Walllpaper" and "Silver Pillows" were shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery. In 1968 he had an exhibition at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. In July of the same year he was shot down, and dangerously wounded, by Valerie Solanis, the founder and sole member of SCUM (The Society for Cutting Up Men). In 1968 he brought out his novel "a", which consisted of telephone calls recorded in his Factory. He made his first film for the cinema, "Flash", with Paul Morissey, followed by "Trash" in 1970. In 1969 the first number of magazine Interview appeared, which Warhol helped bring out. Between 1969-72 he was commissioned to do a number of portraits. The first edition of the book "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (Form A to B and Back Again)" was published in 1975. the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, showed the "Portraits of the 70s" in 1979. in 1980 he became production manager of the cable tv show "Andy Warhol's TV". From 1982-86 he made pictures of disasters. In 1982 he exhibited a series of oxidations and pictures of nazi architecture at the "documenta 7" exhibition. He exhibited "Guns, Knives, Crosses" at the Leo Castelli Gallery, NY, and at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. In 1986 he made portraits of "Lenin" and self portraits. In 1987 he died as a result of an operation. In 1989 the Museum of Modern Art, NY, organized hitherto the largest retrospective exhibition of his work. His estate was auctioned for an endowment fund for the patronage of art.
Visit http://www.warhol-gallery.com/early-life.html and http://www.warhol-gallery.com/pop-artist.html for more information.
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