Andy Warhol

Discover the iconic legacy of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), a pioneering American artist and leading figure in the Pop Art movement, celebrated for his innovative approach to mass production and consumer culture. Warhol rose to fame in the 1960s with his iconic images of celebrities, consumer goods, and everyday objects, such as his famous Campbell’s Soup Cans and portraits of Marilyn Monroe.

Andy Warhol art is characterised by repetition, bold colours, and commercial techniques, like silkscreen printing, which revolutionised the art world and blurred the lines between fine art and commercial design. Warhol’s ability to turn the mundane into art, along with his fascination with fame, identity, and mass media, cemented his place as one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century.

Andy Warhol's auction record was set in May 2022 when his painting Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million at Christie's in New York. This sale marked the highest price ever paid for a twentieth-century artwork at auction.

Explore our available collection of Andy Warhol artwork and learn more about the cinematic world of the Pop Art pioneer.

Andy Warhol Biography

More than twenty years after his death, Andy Warhol remains one of the most influential figures in contemporary art and culture. Warhol was a key figure in the conception of Pop Art, an art movement that emerged in America and elsewhere in the 1950s and early ‘60s, and came to prominence over the next two decades. His images of popular culture celebrities including Elvis, Chairman Mao, Muhammad Ali and most famously, Marilyn Monroe, are among his most important contributions to contemporary art.

Warhol was obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture and the mechanical reproduction

Rather than deriving his work from subjective personal feelings or idealist visions for abstraction which had paved the course of Modern art, Warhol embraced popular culture and commercial processes, most notably silkscreen printing, for their detached and dispassionate manner as seen in his series of Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962, and Brillo Pad Box Sculptures.

In his lifetime, Warhol cultivated celebrity through his studio, the Factory, and his idiosyncratic appearance, defined by his unmistakable white wig.

He produced the cover for the Velvet Underground’s eponymous debut album, as well as a series of accompanying multimedia events titled the Explosive Plastic Inevitable, and would prove to be a friend and mentor to emerging street artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the 1980s.

Warhol’s totemic presence in twentieth century art is reflected in the market for his work, which was coined the ‘one-man Dow Jones’ on account of its strength.

Warhol’s auctions record stands at $105.5 million. Warhol’s cultural influence has been recognised institutionally, most recently at the major retrospective held at the Tate Modern, London, in 2020.