ANDY WARHOL (1928 - 1987)
Andy Warhol, American painter, draughtsman, graphic artist and film producer, had his first one-man exhibition in 1952.  By the early 1960’s, he was the most controversial of all American Pop Artists, his name becoming the most widely known both in the United States and abroad.
The Pop Art movement began as a reaction against the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism.  Warhol, along with other artists of the movement, turned away from the emphasis on emotion in favor of a hard-line realism that made use of many common images associated with popular media.  At a time when enigma was one of the most sought after of aesthetic virtues, Andy Warhol achieved the difficult feat of remaining the most enigmatic artist of all.  Since he first gained fame for his Campbell’s Soup Cans and Brillo Box sculptures at the beginning of the Pop Art movement in the early sixties, critics and the public have argued constantly about him and the success of his art.  Still, of all the post-war artists, Warhol has made the most obvious breaks with tradition and has shown the most single-minded consistency.