Andy Warhola was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh as the son of Slovak immigrants. His father was as a construction worker and died in an accident when Andy was 13 years old. Andy showed an early talent in drawing and painting. After high school he studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Warhol graduated in 1949 and went to New York City where he worked as an illustrator for magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and in commercial advertising. He soon became one of New York's most unique, sought after and successful commercial illustrators.
In the fifties he dyed his hair straw-blond and later he replaced his real hair with blond and silver-grey wigs. One of Andy's friends described him as a true workaholic. Warhol was obsessed by the ambition to become famous and wealthy and he knew he could only achieve the American Dream by hard work.
In 1952 Andy Warhol had his first one-man show exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in New York. In 1956 he had an important group exhibition at the renowned Museum of Modern Art. In the sixties Warhol started painting everyday mass produced objects like Campbell Soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles. He soon became a famous figure in the New York art scene. From 1962 on he started making silkscreen prints of famous personalities like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor.
The quintessence of Andy Warhol's art was to remove the difference between Fine Arts and the Commercial Arts used in magazine illustrations, comic books, record albums or advertising campaigns. Warhol once expressed his philosophy in one poignant sentence: "When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums". He established The Factory, his art studio-hangout-film stage where he and his assistants congregated with B-film actors, musicians, celebrities and the social elite all of whom inspired Warhol’s creative process.
In July of 1968 the pop artist was shot by a woman named Valerie Solanis. Andy was seriously wounded and only narrowly escaped death. Solanis had worked occasionally for the artist in the Factory and had founded a group named SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men)—she was its sole member. When she was arrested the day after, her words were "He had too much control over my life". After this assassination attempt, Warhol made a radical turn in his process of producing art. The philosopher of art mass production now spent most of his time making individual portraits of the rich and affluent of his time like Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson and Brigitte Bardot.
Warhol's activities became more and more entrepreneurial. He started the magazine Interview and even a night-club. In 1974 the Factory was moved to 860 Broadway. In 1975 Warhol published ‘THE philosophy of Andy Warhol’. In this book he describes what art is: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."
In his later years Warhol promoted other artists like Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat and Robert Mapplethorpe. Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987 from complications after a gall bladder operation. More than 2000 people attended the memorial mass at St.Patrick's Cathedral. In May 1994 the Andy Warhol Museum opened in his hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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