Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was born as Andy Warhola on August 6 in 1928 in Pittsburgh which is in Pennsylvania. Andy's father worked in construction and sadly died when Andy was 13. The collected his commercial art degree from the Carnegie Institute Of Technology and from there he moved to New York. He worked in New York as an artist, he had his first fame in 1949, this was when he was hired by Glamour Magazine to do illustrations for a section. The title of this section was "Success is a Job in New York". His last name was spelt wrong on the credits, as Warhol, this is the reason why he dropped the letter a from his last name.

Andy had his first solo exhibition was at the Hugo Gallery in 1952, however he also had a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1956. After this he was hired to draw more advertisements and he was the most successful artist in New York by 1955. Many magazines including Vogue and Harpar's Bazzaar was hiring him to design art for their articles. Andy found a way of transferring large images onto silk screens, these were placed on canvas. This is the same technique to create Campbell's Soup, this began 1962.

By 1962, he founded an art studio called The factory, this was a studio which could be hired by any artists to mass produce their artwork. A woman called Valerie Solanis came into the studio and shot Warhol in the chest three times. She had worked within the studio on a rare occasion. Solanis had founded a organisation called "SCUM", a society for cutting up men. Andy was rushed to hospital and he was pronounced dead, however doctors was able to massage his heart back into life. Valerie was put into a mental hospital and was also put into prison for three years.

After he recovered from his ordeal, he began a magazine called inter/view in 1969, over that time he continued to paint and also published a book on philosophy. In the 70s, he made a lot of money by doing portraits of celebrities and the upper class. His nightclub was also one of the hot spots in New York at the same time. 

On the February 22 1987 Andy died whilst having a gall bladder operation at the New York Hospital. More than two thousand people arrived at his funeral and also a memorial museum was opened in Pittsburgh in his honour. He is remember as a revolutionary artist and began the pop art movement.