Andy Warhol at the London Original Print Fair
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
HILARY and Georgie Gerrish, in association with David Dawson, are presenting a major exhibition of Andy Warhol’s prints and related drawings at this year’s London Original Print Fair which runs from April 23 to April 27, 2008.
The show will include well-known sixties icons such as the Marilyns and the menacing Electric Chairs of the seventies alongside rare pieces from the eighties inspired by the masterpieces of Edvard Munch.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) grew to fame in the 1960s as the figurehead of the emerging Pop Art movement and still, over twenty years after his death, he holds a stable position as one of the most sought-after artists available on the art market today.
Warhol revolutionised the concept of uniqueness in painting by embracing commercial screen-printing techniques and taking his subjects from the mass media and consumer culture traditionally outside the realm of ‘high art’. He famously announced his ‘retirement’ from painting in 1966 and launched Factory Additions in order to publish prints inspired by his most iconic paintings to date. As Warhol himself proclaimed, ‘repetition adds up to reputation’.
As his career progressed, Warhol became increasingly experimental and his printing technnique far more sophisticated. The seventies saw the introduction of gestural paint strokes, collage and the hand-drawn line into his prints. Then in the eighties, Warhol began to create unique edition prints of subjects including Munch’s masterpiece The Scream, again questioning the concept of the single masterpiece as well as the inherent seriality of the printmaking process itself.
Warhol’s prints are now regarded as among the most iconic images of the twentienth century and the exhibition of this key collection aims to broaden understanding of the full range of his oeuvre and scope of his subject matter.
NB: On Thursday, April 24 at 6pm, there will be an informal talk on Andy Warhol and his infamous silver factory by David Dawson.
To find out more about the London Original Print Fair visit the official webside (see right hand panel).