"Andy Warhol was born as Andrew Warhola in Forest City, Pennsylvania in 1928 of working class immigrants from northeast Slovakia - his father worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Warhol came down with a disease called St. Vitus' dance as a child, which is caused by a virus that affects nerves and is thought to be a complication of scarlet fever. This disease changed his looks, and hi
...see more »s life, forever. Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising wokring at Glamour magazine and other periodicals who published Warhol's drawings and his work was also shown by large retailers. He was honored in 1952 with a showing of illustrations for the well-known author, Truman Capote. During this decade, Warhol frequented a popular and trendy east-side restaurant called Serendipity 3 where he became friendly with the owners. They framed and displayed many of Warhol's rejected illustrations on the restaurant walls. The stylish restaurant customers could buy the art for only $25-$50 and an impromptu gallery was started. He created a series of famous illustrations for the I. Miller shoe company and became well-known mainly for his whimsical ink drawings of shoes done in a loose, blotted style. In the 1960s, Warhol began to make paintings of famous American products such as Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola. His 1961 Campbell's Soup cans painting made him a highly visible celebrity whose actions and statements were instant headlines. He switched to silkscreen prints based on comic strips, advertisements, and newspaper photos of public personalities seeking not only to make art of mass produced items, but to mass produce the art itself. He said that he wanted to be like a robot. He hired and supervised art workers engaged in making prints, shoes, films, books and other items at his studio called The Factory located on Union Square in New York City. A lot of Warhol's works revolve around the concept of Americana and American culture. He painted money, food, women's shoes, celebrities, newspaper clippings, and everyday objects. To him, these subjects represented American cultural values. A founder of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, he often collaborated with other artists in creating works such as celebrity portraits, animals, flowers, and pictures of many common household items. In 1963, he began using silkscreen more and more, rather than painting. Also in the 1960s, he expanded his efforts to underground movies, but was shot and wounded in 1968 by Valerie Solanis, an actress from his films. In 1969, Warhol began to publish a fashion and gossip magazine called 'Interview.' In the 1970s, Warhol began work on his highly popular silkscreen serial portraits of famous individuals such as "Mao Tse-Tung" which sold for very high prices. He also created his "Hammer and Sickle" series. In 1975, he wrote and published an autobiography 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).' Warhol died February 22, 1987, in New York. His collection of antiques and collectibles was auctioned after his death in 1987. In 1994, The Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh. Approximately 43 of his original works sold for more than a million dollars in 2006 making Warhol one of the most expensive artists in the world. Individual pieces have sold for far more, with "Liz" - a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor - selling for $11.25 million dollars in May, 2006. In November, 2006 "Orange Marilyn" sold for $14.5 million, "Sixteen Jackies" for $14 million and "Mao" for $15.5 million dollars. The value of his collected works has increased by more than 350% in the last ten years. Partial list of works: Paintings/Silk Screens 1960 Water Heater (Museum of Modern Art, New York City) 1962 100 Soup Cans (Darmstadt) 1962 Marilyn Diptych (Tate, London) 1965 Flowers (Museum of Modern Art, New York City) 1966 Self-Portrait (Museum of Modern Art, New York City) 1965 Seven Decades of Janis (Museum of Modern Art, New York City) Green Coca-Cola Bottles (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City) 1974 Mao Zedong Films 1963 Sleep, 1963 Blow Job, 1964 Empire, 1964 Mario Banana, 1964 Harlot , 1965 My Hustler , 1966 Chelsea Girls, 1967 Bike Boy, 1968 Lonesome Cowboys, 1969 Blue Movie, 1972 Women in Revolt, 1973 Flesh for Frankenstein, 1974 Blood for Dracula "« see less
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