Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an American painter, filmmaker and author, and a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Andrew Warhola was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents had emigrated to the USA from Ruthenia, a region now in the Slovak Republic. In 1949 he moved to New York and changed his name to Warhol. He worked as a commercial artist for magazines and also designed advertising and window displays. In the early 1960s, he began to experiment with reproductions based on advertisements, newspaper headlines and other mass-produced images from American popular culture such as Campbell's soup tins and Coca Cola bottles. In 1962 he began his series portraits of Marilyn Monroe. In 1963, Warhol began to make experimental films. His studio, known as the Factory, became a meeting point for young artists, actors, musicians and hangers-on. Warhol was now established as an internationally famous artist and throughout the 1970s and 1980s exhibited his work around the world. On 22 February 1987, Warhol died unexpectedly in a New York hospital following a gall bladder operation.