Artist 30: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, as we all know is the poster child of Pop Art.  Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, he graduated high school in 1945 and went on to what was then Carnegie Institute of Technology.  While there he received formal training in pictorial design.  Once he graduated in 1949 he moved to New York City where he worked as a commercial illustrator.  In the early 1950s he legally shortened his name to Warhol from Warhola, at this time he also decided to work as a serious artist.  His early works were characterized by expressive and a more painterly style said to be the influence of abstract expressionism.  After that phase he turned away from abstract expressionism and tried to completely remove any evidence of the artist in his work.  In 1964 he moved to what would be called The Factory.  This is where he did some of his most well known work and began experimenting with film.  When a friend made an attempt on his life in 1963 he began to distance himself from others and ended The Factory scene.  Once that scene was gone many critics viewed him later works to be that of a decline in his art.  In the 1970s and 1980s he returned to painting and in 1987 he died from a complication in a medical procedure.