Visitors at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
Image Rights The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol is, without a doubt, one of the best known and most appreciated contemporary artists. Through his multifaceted and prolific artistic production, he has been able to grasp some of the main transformations taking place in our society.
This also explains why, recently, Warhol’s screen print entitled “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” was sold at Christie’s in New York for 195 million dollars, setting the record for the most expensive contemporary work of all time.
However, even those who want to see graphic works by Andy Warhol can rest assured. Some of these, in fact, are on permanent display in some of the most prestigious contemporary art museums in the world.
Starting right from the United States, in particular New York and Pittsburgh, his hometown.
Where to see Andy Warhol’s original prints in the United States
In 1993, six years after his death, the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the artist was born in 1928, wanted to pay homage to his fellow citizen by inaugurating the largest museum in the world dedicated entirely to Andy Warhol.
The Andy Warhol Museum
Third floor at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
Image Rights The Andy Warhol Museum
This museum houses, to date, the largest collection of Warhol’s unique artwork and graphics, along with archival materials. In fact, drawings, paintings, photographs, prints and even films and videos shot by the artist are kept here.
It is one of the most comprehensive museums dedicated to this artist in the world and the largest ever in North America. Including the serial work called “Time Capsules“, consisting of 610 containers that Warhol himself filled and sealed.
Remaining overseas, other famous graphic works by this great artist such as “Flowers” (1964) and “Marylin Monroe” (1967) can be admired at the MoMa – Museum of Modern Art in New York, or at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, also It is located in the Big Apple, where the 1986 self-portraits and the productions “Electric Chairs” (1964) and “Orange Disaster” (1963) are kept.
If instead we wanted to focus only on authentic and autographed graphic works by Warhol, one of the largest selections is certainly found at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Indeed, this museum holds Warhol’s bold portfolio of colored silkscreens titled “Ten 20th Century Portraits of Jews” made in the early 1980s, as well as a large selection of flower drawings by and his intimate Polaroids or friends and acquaintances from the 70s.
Some versions of the vibrant series “Flowers” (1967-68) and one of his screen-printed canvases of Mao (1972) are found, however, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, while The Broad, a museum facility dedicated to contemporary art located next to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, houses some of his early cartoons and humorous sketches done when he was not yet famous.
Where to see Andy Warhol’s original prints in Asia
Moving to Asia, it is possible to admire some interesting works by the father of Pop Art at the Leeum Samsung Art Museum in Seoul.
One of the most precious assets of this collection is undoubtedly the “Forty-Five Gold Marilyns” edition (1979), an eerie and dramatic scale version in gold silkscreen on black canvas in which the blonde Hollywood diva is still celebrated.
Where to see Andy Warhol’s original prints in Europe
Andy Warhol with his art has become an inspiration for all contemporary artists.
It is therefore normal that both his works are exhibited almost everywhere, through temporary exhibitions and permanent exhibitions organized in art galleries and museums in major cities around the world, especially in Europe.
Some of his most important works, such as “Liz Taylor” (1965), “Skulls” (1976) or “Gun” (1981) are for example exhibited at the British National Museum of Modern Art in London, known as Tate Modern, which it is absolutely one of the most visited contemporary art museums on the planet and which holds the widest selection of works by this artist.
Andy Warhol
Elvis I and II 1964
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift from the Women’s Committee Fund, 1966
© 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London
Photo taken from tate.org.uk
The Tate galleries have also acquired some lesser-known but nevertheless fascinating unique works, such as “Birmingham Race Riot” (1963), which provides insight into Warhol’s engagement with the subject of political activism.
Remaining in Europe, unique works and drawings by Warhol can also be admired at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. Among other things, some of his conceptual sculptural works from the Brillo Soap Pads Box series in the 1960s can be found here.
That said, to answer the question in this article where to see graphic works by Andy Warhol in Europe, the answer can only be: at the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce (MMUAW) in Slovakia.
Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art di Medzilaborce
Photo taken from the museum website: https://www.muzeumaw.sk/en/article/museum
This establishment, founded in 1991, is dedicated to current trends in contemporary art and, in particular, to the life and art of Andy Warhol. Here you can admire around 200 original graphic works by the founder of Pop Art, some of which come from private collections or belong to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York. The works belong to all of the artist’s creative periods, including his dominant artistic themes.
Where to see the works of Andy Warhol in Italy
Andy Warhol has dedicated several works to our country. Among these also one of his “Disasters“, the triptych “FATE PRESTO” (1981) in which the title of the newspaper Il Mattino is reproduced in large letters in the aftermath of the Irpinia earthquake.
The affection for Italy of this great artist is reciprocated. In fact, every year temporary exhibitions and events dedicated to him are organized in many regions. There are also permanent exhibitions in Rome, Naples and Milan.
In Rome, for example, it is possible to admire Warhol’s unique work “Mother and daughter” for free at the Bilotti Museum. “Tina and Lisa Bilotti” (Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas) made in 1981. While at the Goethe House in Via del Corso 18 there is a portrait of Goethe made by Warhol himself in 1982.
Andy Warhol, Madre e figlia: Tina e Lisa Bilotti, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 1981
Photo taken from the Carlo Bilotti Museum website: https://www.museocarlobilotti.it/
Two graphic works by the great Andy Warhol are also exhibited in two important Neapolitan museums, Capodimonte and Madre. At the Museum of Ancient Art of Capodimonte, where there is a section dedicated to contemporary art, there is “Vesuvius” (1985) a work created by Warhol to pay homage to the Neapolitan panorama with the characteristic volcano in the background.
At the Madre, on the other hand, you can admire unique works such as the “Spalding Soft Ball” and “Five Campbell’s soup“, everyday objects transformed into works of art according to the characteristic vision of this artist.
