A prolific artist, film director, producer and entrepreneur, Andy Warhol was a leading figure of the pop art movement and one of the most popular artists of his time. He redefined and blurred the lines between fine art and mainstream, and his work remains a great inspiration for many artists to this day. Driven by the Pop Art movement that flourished in the 1960s, Warhol created his first pop paintings in the early 1960s. In 1962 he began working with one of his most prominent mediums: the photographic silkscreen print. This medium allowed Warhol to easily produce and duplicate many iconic images throughout his career. He created an extensive series of celebrity portraits including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and many other important pop culture figures. In the same year he began working with photographic silkscreen, Warhol exhibited the now-iconic series of Campbell’s Soup Cans at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. It was during this period that Warhol’s artistic endeavours also turned to film, as he produced a range of video art, including Sleep (1963), a cutting-edge six-hour movie detailing American poet John Giorno in his sleep, and one of his most commercially successful films The Chelsea Girls (1966). Later in his career, Warhol took interest in television, producing and appearing in multiple shows.

Continuously exploring new media, Warhol’s first sculptures were exhibited in 1964. Reflective of factory assembly lines and stacks of produce in chain supermarkets, Warhol created hundreds of replicas of commonly used goods including Brillo Boxes and Heinz Boxes. The finish sculptures were nearly indistinguishable from the real products and became yet another staple of Warhol’s oeuvre. Around the same time Warhol also experimented with performance and immersive art in live performances with dancers, lighting effects and projected footage. Taking more of an interest in publishing, Warhol cofounded the magazine Interview in 1969, and published books such as Andy Warhol’s Index (book) which came out in 1967, and THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) in 1975.

Warhol was a legend during his own lifetime and a mentor to artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His influence and approach is pervasive and can be seen in the work of many, such as Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons. With an extensive permanent collection, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the largest museum in North America dedicated to a single artist.