Andy Warhol ( the life of )

Andy Warhol, the American painter, printmaker, illustrator, and film maker, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928 and died in 1987 in New York. Shortly after his birth, his family relocated to New York. The only son of immigrant, Czech parents, Andy finished high school and went on to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, graduating in 1949 with hopes of becoming a public school art teacher. Soon, he will find that teaching is not his niche. While in Pittsburgh, he worked for a department store arranging window displays. His boss used to always tell him to refer to fashion magazine advertisements for inspiration so recognizing the job as a waste of time, he recalls later that the fashion magazines "gave me a sense of style and other career opportunities." Upon graduating, Warhol moved to New York City and began his artistic career as a commercial artist and illustrator for magazines and newspapers.

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup I, 1968.

Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, 1962. Display...

English: Andy Warhol

Although he was extremely shy and was stuck wearing dirty t-shirts and jeans, Warhol tried to speak with anyone at all who might be able to assist him in the art world. With his portfolio secure in a brown paper bag, Warhol introduced himself and showed his work to anyone that could help him out. Eventually, he got a job with "Glamour Magazine", doing illustrations for an article called "Success is a Job in New York," along with doing a spread showing women's shoes. By proving his reliability and skills, he acquired other such jobs, illustrating adds for Harpers Bazaar, Millers Shoes, designing for the Upjohn Company, the National Broadcasting Company and others. In these early drawings, Warhol used a device that would prove itself very beneficial throughout his commercial art period of the 1950's - a tentative, blotted ink line produced by...