The Iconic Art of Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (F. & S. II.22-31).
Estimate: £1,000,000–£1,500,000.

Published in 1967, Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) was the first of the Factory Additions projects, and it has since remained among the most celebrated of all of Warhol’s printed ouevre. Exploiting the repetitive yet malleable capacities of screenprinting, the portfolio comprises ten prints realised in various colour combinations, from strikingly muted blacks, silvers and greys, to brilliant — at times lurid — pinks, greens and yellows.

Marilyn sets were frequently broken up, as a result, complete and uniformly numbered examples, such as the present work are becoming increasingly scarce.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction
London 7 March 2018

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Andy Warhol, African Elephant, 1983.
Estimate: £1,400,000–1,800,000.

African Elephant, from 1983, belongs to Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species series – a set of 10 compositional variants depicting animals chosen for their high risk of extinction. Described by Warhol as ‘animals in makeup’, the endangered species were treated in the same typically, and by this time iconic, Warholian manner as his pantheon of stage and screen icons.

Set against a bold yellow backdrop, Warhol’s African Elephant is here articulated in screens of complimentary red-purple and grey that are overlaid with blue linear marks.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction
London 7 March 2018

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Andy Warhol, Hammer and Sickle.
Estimate: £2,500,000–3,500,000.

Conceptually rigorous in its political implications and visually arresting in its colourful and carefully balanced composition, Hammer and Sickle is an enduring testament to Warhol’s position as one of the most considered and intelligent painters of the modern era.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction
London 7 March 2018

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Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980.
Estimate: £1,200,000–1,800,000.

Effortlessly chic and dazzling, Diamond Dust Shoes is a joy ride into Warhol's Pop palette. Composed in 1980 as part of the series of the same name, the work revisits Andy Warhol’s oldest artistic motifs, the high heel and stiletto, and evokes the legendary New York discotheque culture of the early 1980s.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
London 8 March

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Andy Warhol, Mao, 1973.
Estimate: £550,000–750,000.

Only just rediscovered, this twelve by ten inch Mao forms part of Andy Warhol’s iconic 1972 to 1973 series of the same name. Attesting to the work’s rarity, it has not been seen in public since its creation and is the only work from this pivotal series that is shown in black and white in Warhol’s encylopaedic Catalogue Raisonné.

The present Mao was bought by the illustrious Italian film designer, producer and director Ferdinando Scarfiotti, quite possibly directly out of the Factory.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
London 8 March

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Andy Warhol, Dollar Sign, 1982.
Estimate: £200,000–£300,000.

Warhol’s previous work as a graphic designer granted him an unparalleled ability to elevate brands and symbols into icons. Combining ingenious, creative draughtsmanship with the blotting of ink while still wet, the Warhol of the 1950s pioneered a unique method of rudimentary printmaking.

Bold, bright, and bombastic, Dollar Sign exemplifies Andy Warhol’s untempered delight n graphically mapping the constant, unseen dialogue between intangible abstract systems of the collective consciousness, and tangible marks and shapes reproducible by hand.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
London 8 March

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Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Juan Dubose, 1983.
Estimate: £400,000–600,000.

Composed in 1983, Keith Haring and Juan Dubose is a tender and haunting diptych of the artist Keith Haring and his friend and lover Juan Dubose.

Here Warhol creates a bipartite portrait of Haring and Dubose that tells of at once the fondness of their relationship, the inconsistencies beneath romantic love, their tragically premature deaths by AIDS, and the garish insensitivity of the mediated relay of these events.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
London 8 March

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Andy Warhol,Campbell's Soup I (F. & S. II.44-53) circa 1968.
Estimate: £300,000–500,000.

The present lot, Campbell's Soup I, is a series of 10 screenprints based on the original painted works first exhibited in 1962. Warhol linked Campbell's soup explicitly to his, and by extension to every American's, life and childhood: "I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day for twenty years. I guess, the same thing over and over again. Someone said my life has dominated me; I like that idea".

Prints & Multiples
27 March 2018 | London

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Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (F. & S. II.28) 1967.
Estimate: £60,000–80,000.

Warhol’s masterful manipulation of his charged subject matter has given Monroe’s image a wide and timeless appeal. In fact, despite her iconic stature, it can now be difficult to extract one’s perception of Monroe, the woman and actress, from Warhol’s portrayal of Monroe.

Or, as Isabella Geist puts it: “The irony of Andy Warhol's ‘Marilyn’ is that it is an icon of an icon created by an icon” (Isabella Geist, ‘Warhol’s “Marilyn”’, in: Forbes Magazine, 24 April, 2002, online).

Prints & Multiples
27 March 2018 | London

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente and Andy Warhol, Origin of Cotton, 1984.
Estimate: £350,000–£450,000.

Despite wildly distinct stylistic differences, Origin of Cotton evinces a dynamic and vibrant culmination of three of the most revolutionary minds in Contemporary art.

A densely packed and vivacious collaboration, the present work offers a wealth of visual information, with Warhol’s iconic silkscreened flower emanating from the centre of the canvas, erased and effaced by Basquiat’s trademark phrase 'Origin of Cotton' and joined by a host of startled nightmarish faces in Clemente’s idiosyncratic haunting style.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
London 8 March

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Andy Warhol, African Elephant (F. & S. II.293).
Estimate: £30,000–50,000.

The present work is a screenprint in colours from Warhol's Endangered Species series, comprising a portfolio of 10 endangered animals: Siberian Tiger, San Francisco Silverspot, Orangutan, Grevy’s Zebra, Black Rhinoceros, Bighorn Ram, African Elephant, Pine Barrens, Tree Frog, Giant Panda and Bald Eagle.

This series was commissioned by his friends and publishers Ronald and Frayda Feldman (of Feldman Fine Arts, New York) after discussions about how to raise environmental consciousness.

Prints & Multiples
27 March 2018 | London

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