Andy Warhol
- 31 January 2012

Andy Warhol was born on August, 6, 1928. But information about his birth is pretty contradictory – some sources say that he was born on September 28, others that on August 6, 1927, 1928 or 1930. Andy himself states that the date of his birth is August 6, 1928. At the time when Andy was born his parents were living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. They got to know each other in a small village of Mikova, located in today’s northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before giving birth to their 3 children Ondrej Varchola and Júlia née Zavacká emigrated in the USA.

Andy was as the fourth child in the family.
In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed.
When Andy was 13 his farther died due to the accident in mine shaft.

In 1949 Andy graduated from the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he studied commercial art. Just after graduation he moved to New-York and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements.
At that time Andy became Andy Warhol (his real name was Andrew Warhola) due to mistaken spelling. But he liked this name and decided to keep it.

After advertising Andy Warhol started to try not only drawing and painting, but also photography, silk screen printmaking, filmmaking, journalism and many other things. Being hot-tempered and having great communication skills Andy became to feel at home in a fashionable society where he gained fame, confidence and delight. Later Andy Warhol was called “the farther of pop-art”. Living all the time on the periphery between two absolutely different social levels and culture environment Andy Warhol was building his art on the basis of well-known dichotomies: low and sublimate, mass and elitist, popular and forgotten. Andy Warhol tried to solve an opposition between daily culture of masses and high elitist art in his own creative way.

Researchers mention that Andy Warhol contributed a lot in filmmaking, journalism and photography. His works represent the triumph of commercial pop-art in the USA. Andy dedicated all his life to the art photography, its processing and mass distribution.

During the 1st half of 1960s Andy Warhol started to make paintings with dollar bills. At the same time he began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles.
During the next years the artist started to master silk screen printmaking with the help of which he could copy the same scene several times. These copies later became a business card of Andy Warhol.
It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor.



For a long time problems in works of the artist were only dedicated to color filters and scenes. Principle of monotony and mass always remained the same. The idea of the artist was to make something permanent, like it was manufactured during daily work of the plant. His main aim was to achieve the same participation, the same thinking in all his works. At that time Andy reproduced pictures from magazines and newspapers. These works didn’t have and practical usage or meaning. In his works the artist pictured natural and industrial disasters, mass deaths and disorders on streets. It would have seemed that such works should have raises a storm of emotions from spectators. But Andy wanted to have the contrary – to print this pictures so many times so that they had lost any meaning and didn’t raise any emotions except indifference and despondency. In the same way Andy Warhol was living his life.
As Andy Warhol used mass-production technique of silk screen printmaking he made many works that later became a real symbol of pop-art and American culture of XXth century. Among his most famous works on photography are: The Andy Warhol Museum, Christie’s, Picture Alliance, AP, Stern Magazine, Cinetext and many others.

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Updated16.05.2013 - 16:00