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Andrew Warhola was born on 6 August 1928 in Forest City, Pennsylvania, USA, a
small town northeast of Scranton. His father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary
Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavacky Warhola, in
1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around
some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years, Andy suffered
from several nervous breakdowns. Overcoming this, he graduated from Schenley High
School in Pittsburgh in 1945, and enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology
(now Carnegie-Mellon University), graduating in June 1949. During college, he met
Philip Pearlstein, a fellow student.
After graduation, Andy Warhol (having dropped the letter 'a' from his last name)
moved to New York City, and shared an apartment with Pearlstein at St. Mark's Place
off of Avenue A for a couple months. During this time, he moved in and out of
several Manhattan apartments. In New York, he met Tina Fredericks, art editor of
Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the
Success is a Job in New York, and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for
various magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazzar, book jackets, and holiday
greeting cards.
During the 1950s, he moved to an apartment on East 75th Street. His mother moved in
with him, and Fritizie Miller become his agent. In 1952, his first solo exhibition
was held at Hugo Gallery, New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman
Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete
Book of Etiquette. Around 1953-1955, he worked for a theater group on the Lower
East Side, and designs sets. It is around that time that he dyed his hair silver.
Warhol published several books, including Twenty Five Cats Named Sam, and One Blue
Pussy. In 1956, he traveled around the world with Charles Lisanby, a television-set
designer. In April of this year, he was included in his first group exhibition,
Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He began receiving
accolades for his work, with the 35th Annual Art Directors Club Award for
Distinctive Merit, for an I.Miller shoe advertisement. He published In The Bottom
Of My Garden later that year. In 1957, received 36th Annual Art Directors Club
Medal and Award of Distinctive Merit, for the I.Miller show advertisements, and
Life Magazine published his illustrations for an article, "Crazy Golden
Slippers".
In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips
in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, Superman, and two of Coca-Cola bottles. In
1961, using the Dick Tracy comic strip, he designed a window display for Lord &
Taylor, at this time, major art galleries around the nation begin noticing his
work. In 1962, Warhol made paintings of dollar bills and Campbell soup cans, and
his work was included in an important exhibition of pop art, The New Realists, held
at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. In November of this year, Elanor Ward showed his
paintings at Stable Gallery, and the exhibition began a sensation. In 1963, he
rented a studio in a firehouse on East 87th Street. He met his assistant, Gerard
Malanga, and started making his first film, Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of
(1964). Later, he drove to Los Angeles for his second exhibition at the Ferus
Gallery. In November of that year, he found a loft at 231 East 47th Street, which
became his main studio, The Factory. In December, he began production of Red
Jackie, the first of the Jackie series. In 1964, his first solo exhibition in
Europe, held at the Galerie Ileana Sonnebend in Paris, featured the Flower series.
He received a commission from architect Philip Johnson to make a mural, entitled
Thirteen Most Wanted Men for the New York State Pavilion in the New York World's
Fair. In April, he received an Independent Film Award from Film Culture magazine.
In November, his first solo exhibition in the US was held at Leo Castelli Gallery.
And at this time, he began his self portrait series.
In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and
collaborator. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Institute of
Contempary Art, at the University of Pennsylvania. During this year, he made a
surprise announcement of his retirement from painting, but it was to be short
lived. He would resume painting again in 1972. It was around this time that he met
Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker (collectively known as
The Velvet Underground), and a German-born model turned chanteuse called Nico. He
paired Nico with the Velvets, and they developed a close bond with Warhol. This was
an alliance that forever changed the face of world culture. Warhol produced the
group's first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, which has been called "the
most influential record ever" by many critics. Later, a multimedia show developed
(called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable), managed, and produced by Warhol,
featuring the Velvet Underground.
In the summer of 1966, Warhol's film Chelsea Girls (1966) became the first
underground film to be shown at a commercial theater. In 1967, Chelsea Girls opened
in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and six of his Self Portraits were shown at Expo
67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In August of this year, he gave a lecture at
various colleges in the Los Angeles area, his persona is so popular that some
colleges hire Allen Midgette to impersonate him for lectures. Later, Warhol moved
The Factory to 33 Union Square West, and met Fred Hughes, who later became
President of Enterprises, and Interview Magazine. In 1968, Warhol's first solo
European museum exhibition was held at Moderna Musset, Stockholm. But later that
year on June 3, 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanis, an ultra-radical and
member of the entourage surrounding Warhol. Solanis was the founder of SCUM
(Society for Cutting Up Men) Fortunately, Warhol survived the assassination attempt
after spending two months in a hospital. This incident is the subject of the film,
I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Afterwards, Andy Warhol dropped out of the filmmaking
business, but now and then continued his contribution to film and art. He never
emotionally recovered from his brush with death.
During the 1970s and 80s, Andy Warhol's status as a media icon skyrocketed, and he
used his influence to back many younger artists. He began publishing of Interview
magazine, with the first issue being released in fall of 1969. In 1971, his play,
entitled Pork, opened at London at the Round House Theatre. He resumed painting in
1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. The Factory was moved to 860
Broadway, and in 1975, he bought a house on Lexington Street. A major retrospective
of his work is held in Zurich. In 1976, he did the Skulls, and Hammer and Sickle
series. Throughout the late 70s and 80s, a retrospective exhibition was held, as
Warhol began work on the Reversals, Retrospectives, and Shadows series. The Myths
series, Endangered Species series, and Ads series followed through the early and
mid 1980s. On 22 February 1987, a "day of medical infamy", as quoted by one
biographer, Andy Warhol died following complications from gall bladder surgery. He
was 58 years old.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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