Andy Warhol

A gifted illustrator, Andy Warhol began his career as a commercial artist. He is the first artist to make work using the technical processes of advertising: photomontage, mechanical enlargement, and silk-screen printing. Starting in 1956, he published a series of limited edition album covers and, a few years later, his first silk-screened acrylic on canvas works using well-known comic imagery. From then on, Warhol was the star of American Pop Art, adopting the formal conventions of commercial imagery while denouncing certain aspects of American society. His imagery stemmed from the artificial worlds of mechanical reproduction, supermarkets, Hollywood stars and other highly recognizable personalities.