Andy Warhol – pioneer American pop artist

Andy Warhol was a pioneer American pop artist and film maker. His paintings delighted the art public and brought him fame. He was a commercial designer, painter, printmaker, filmmaker, and publisher.
His real name was Andrew Warhola. He was born on August 6, 1928 in Forest City, Pennsylvania. Andy was the son of a construction worker and miner from Czechoslovakia. In 1945-1949, he attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and received a bachelor of fine arts degree in pictorial design. In 1949 Warhol arrived in New York City, where he drew illustrations for advertisements. His shoe advertisement brought him the Art Directors’ Club Medal in 1957. His work appeared in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines.

In 1960 Warhol did a series on comic strips such as Dick Tracy, Popeye, Superman and the Little King. He created paintings of Coca Cola bottles and Campbell soup cans, portraits of celebrities. Warhol took familiar objects and made them into art.
From 1963 to 1974, he had been involved in the production of more than sixty films. His films were known for not having plots and for being very long.
In 1964 Warhol established his Factory, a rented attic that became a large mass-production studio in New York.
In 1968 Warhol was wounded and his slow recovery included a two-month hospital stay.
In 1983 he created a series of endangered species paintings which depicted various threatened wildlife.

Albert Einstein

Andy Warhol died of heart failure on February 22, 1987, in New York City.
He was the founder of the homo universale ideology, the creator of works that are synonymous with the concept of commercial pop art.
In the 1960s he was the manager and producer of the first alternative rock band The Velvet Underground. Several feature films and documentaries were made about Warhol’s life. In the film Basquiat, dedicated to the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the role of Warhol was played by legendary David Bowie.