Andy Warhol
In keeping with the example of the Hollywood stars that were his first heroes, the details of Warhol's birth remain a matter of dispute: 6 August 1928 in Pittsburgh; 28 September 1928 in Forest City, Penn.; and 28 October 1928, also in Forest City, have been put forward by Warhol and others. Other years ranging from 1929 to 1933 and other locations, including Philadelphia, Cleveland, and McKeesport, Penn., have also circulated. Warhol was born Andrew Warhola, Jr.; he took the name Andy Warhol in 1949 after he established himself in New York City.
Warhol's parents were first-generation Czechoslovakian immigrants. His father, Andrej, was a blue-collar laborer; Julia, his mother, supplemented the family income with piecework handcrafts during the Depression. Later she would live with Warhol in New York.
Warhol graduated from Schenley High School in Pittsburgh in 1945. He then studied Pictorial Design at Carnegie Institute of Technology, graduating in 1949. At Carnegie Tech he formed a bond with painter Philip Pearlstein; the two lodged together in New York during the summer of 1949. Warhol quickly established himself in New York graphic design and "applied arts" circles, and in 1957 he founded Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc., a commercial design firm. By 1958 he began to collect the work of contemporary artists, including Jasper Johns; in 1962 he purchased Duchamp's Box in a Valise (see AMAM inv. 73.13). In 1960 he produced paintings based on popular comic strips, including Popeye, Dick Tracy, and Nancy. In the summer of 1962 his Campbell's Soup Can paintings were shown at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles; the show aroused controversy but sold weakly. Subsequently, with the example of Robert Rauschenberg in mind, Warhol adopted photo silkscreen as the major vehicle for the production of his paintings. In the fall of 1962 his work was shown at the Stable Gallery in New York. In 1963 Warhol added filmmaking to his repertoire; he established a new studio on 47th street to accommodate his visual arts practice and the growing entourage that participated in its production. In 1964 he began to exhibit with Leo Castelli, then New York's most influential dealer of contemporary art. Warhol's fame and production burgeoned through the 1960s, the latter checked only by a near-fatal assassination attempt in 1968. Warhol's later career is characterized by a vast and multivalent production including paintings, graphics, films, advertising, books, and magazine publishing, coupled with an opaquely public reclusiveness openly modeled on Greta Garbo's retirement. He patronized younger artists, notably the Haitian-American Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). He died after gall bladder surgery in New York City on 22 February 1987.
