The exhibition will continue until June 1, 2023.
Andy Warhol. The King of Pop Art is the retrospective exhibition that Galleria Deodato Arte is dedicating to the brilliant American artist from Thursday, May 11th at Via Nerino 1 in Milan. Over twenty original works by the artist are on display in the gallery, many of which come from museum exhibitions, including a prestigious unique signed piece.
The King of Pop Art is a journey to try to understand what Andy Warhol has been, and still is, for the world of art: a versatile and eccentric artist who has never feared the judgment of critics and has been able to bring art to a new dimension, the popular one. With his relentless search, fueled by his own obsessions and innate artistic vein, Warhol elevated the most common objects t works of art, exposed the power of consumerism and revealed the power of pop color.
Finally, he himself became a work of art, a myth destined to live forever.
Looking at the selection of works on display, one realizes the absolute relevance, still decades later, of Andy Warhol’s themes and subjects.
Among all artworks, the true protagonist is “Flowers,” a unique piece in silk on canvas, dated 1980, published in a catalog and exhibited in numerous museum exhibitions. Another important piece is “Drag Queen,” the serigraphy taken from the famous Ladies and Gentlemen series of 1975, a series of 10 photographs made for the director of Interview magazine Bob Colacello, depicting drag queens from the Hell’s Kitchen nightclub in New York. Visitors to the exhibition will also find on display “Mao”, a controversial work made in 1972 in a limited edition starting from the image taken from the famous “Little Red Book.” Finally, the serigraphy on paper of Marilyn Monroe represents one of the artist’s favorite subjects, where the diva who died in 1962 is transformed into an icon of mass culture. The work is originally signed on the back by Andy Warhol and is marked “this is not by me, Andy Warhol,” an ironic reference to the paternity of the work in front of the coercion of the Belgian printing house Sunday B. Morning, which decided to launch a reprint for Europe of the first series of “Marilyn,” even though at first Warhol was not willing to collaborate on this initiative.
Painter, graphic artist, and director, Warhol was artistically born in NY, where he began working as a graphic designer for Vogue, Glamour, and Harper’s Bazaar, immediately gaining wide acclaim. Andy Warhol was an all-around artist, and the greatest advocate of the concept of the reproducibility and commercialization of art. After his first exhibitions in the 1950s, the eclectic artist began making his first silkscreens around 1962, choosing comic book characters, commercial products, and icons of his time as his subjects . Eager to devote himself to a broader project, in 1962 Andy Warhol founded the Factory, a studio where the collaborators of the initiator of pop art produced the silkscreens, but also a meeting point for superstar artists such as Jean-Michael Basquiat and Keith Haring. Warhol also ventured into the world of music, as a financier of the Velvet Underground’s first record, and publishing, as a television producer of Andy Warhol’s TV.