MALE FIGURE

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Andy Warhol
MALE FIGURE
ca. 1954

About the Item

ON THE BACK 2 STAMPS OF THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS UND INSCRIPTION IN PENCIL PROVENANCE: ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, NEW YORK CERTIFICATE: CERTIFCATE OF AUTHENTICITY BY THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS Although Andy Warhol is best known for his flamboyant silkscreens, he was also an outstanding and – throughout his life – impassioned draughtsman. Already at a young age, he took instruction at the Carnegie Museum of Art and won several awards for his drawings, even if he had a drawing style all his own, which – because it was unconventional, sometimes to the point of being downright disrespectful – did not always meet the academic standards of his professors. At the same time, his works in the drawing medium also always make reference to American academy training, which took the European tradition of artistic production as a major orientation, and to the study of the early modernist European masters. The superb drawing oeuvres of Picasso, Matisse, Schiele and Grosz – to name just a few – bore an immense influence on the young artist from Pittsburgh, whose refreshing curiosity and penchant for experimentation is clearly reflected in his works. His drawings reveal an artist who absorbs the world around him visually and reflects on what he perceives in the process. Warhol often found his pictorial subject matter in photographs of everyday street scenes, whose realism he transformed into a specific symbolism that extracts what he considered essential. Already in these early works we encounter his astounding ability to translate the reality found outdoors into an iconic language. Only rediscovered a few years ago by the art dealer Daniel Blau in the archives of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York, the drawings shed light on this largely unknown side of Warhol – presumably the most important artist of the second half of the twentieth century – and give us an inkling of the source of his genius. For in these works he laid the foundations for his entire later oeuvre. We encounter portraits, flowers, protestors, pistols, car accidents, everyday objects and the faces of celebrities. The drawings are distinguished throughout by a spirit of experimentation and innovation and the pleasure taken therein. In our examples, the spontaneity of creative energy is also reflected in the employment of modern media such as the ballpoint pen, which Warhol always had conveniently close at hand to record his ideas and impressions. Already here, the Pop artist availed himself of repetitive, conceptual mechanisms that grant artistic status to the fragmentary and the additive, the copy and the monotype, while also anticipating the preoccupation with silkscreen that would one day take him to world fame. Our drawings are charming examples of Andy Warhol’s early draughtsmanship, which – as elegant as it is playful – in the later course of his career would make way for the sober reality of the so-called American way of life, whose brutality has little to do with the carefree character of these drawings. In the concrete depiction of things, however, Warhol would prove consistently capable of calling attention to the essentials and thus reminding us to be critical in our reception of the imagery today’s world bombards us with.

Creator:
Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987, American)
Creation Year:
ca. 1954
Dimensions:
Height: 12.8 in (32.5 cm)Width: 10.99 in (27.9 cm)
Condition:
Excellent.
Gallery Location:
Frankfurt, DE
Reference Number:
1stDibs: G140321202147

Shop All Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

The name of American artist Andy Warhol is all but synonymous with Pop art, the movement he helped shape in the 1960s. He is known for his clever appropriation of motifs and images from popular advertising and commercials, which he integrated into graphic, vibrant works that utilized mass-production technologies such as printmaking, photography and silkscreening. Later in his career, Warhol expanded his oeuvre to include other forms of media, founding Interview magazine and producing fashion shoots and films on-site at the Factory, his world-famous studio in New York.

Born and educated in in Pittsburgh, Warhol moved to New York City in 1949 and built a successful career as a commercial illustrator. Although he made whimsical drawings as a hobby during these years, his career as a fine artist began in the mid-1950s with ink-blot drawings and hand-drawn silkscreens. The 1955 lithograph You Can Lead a Shoe to Water illustrates how he incorporated in his artwork advertising styles and techniques, in this case shoe commercials.

As a child, Warhol was often sick and spent much of his time in bed, where he would make sketches and put together collections of movie-star photographs. He described this period as formative in terms of his skills and interests. Indeed, Warhol remained obsessed with celebrities throughout his career, often producing series devoted to a famous face or an object from the popular culture, such as Chairman Mao or Campbell’s tomato soup. The 1967 silkscreen Marilyn 25 embodies his love of bright color and famous subjects.

Warhol was a prominent cultural figure in New York during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. The Factory was a gathering place for the era’s celebrities, writers, drag queens and fellow artists, and collaboration was common. To this day, Warhol remains one of the most important artists of the 20th century and continues to exert influence on contemporary creators.

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