Beschreibung:

21 Andy Warhol Flowers 1964 Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen. 48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm.) Signed “Andy Warhol ©” and inscribed by Frederick Hughes “I certify that this is an authentic painting by Andy Warhol completed by him in 1964, Frederick Hughes” on the overlap.
Provenance Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen; Ingemar Pousette, Stockholm; Jan-Eric Löwenadler, Stockholm and New York; Klabal Gallery, Minneapolis; Private Collection; Sale: Christie’s, London, Post -War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, June 20, 2007, lot 51; Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Humlebæk, Denmark, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol September 1990 -January 1991, no. 27 Literature G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, Volume 02A, London, 2004, p. 290, no. 1316 (illustrated in color) Catalogue Essay “’Death? It has become a bore,’ Andy Warhol said after completing his series of suicides, accidents, and electric chairs. He started looking for an image that could stand for the very symbol of joy and happiness: flowers, of course. They appeared one after the other, in all sizes, formats and colors, covering flower beds and entire walls” (O. Hahn, Translation: Andy Warhol Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, May 1965). Andy Warhol’s Flowers, 1964 was produced during what was arguably the most significant time period of the artist’s career. Though Warhol had already experienced a great deal of success with his images of Campbell’s Soup Cans, Liz, Marilyn and Elvis, the year 1964 saw his dramatic and meteoric rise to fame. To round off an outstanding season, Leo Castelli scheduled a Warhol show to take place at his gallery from November to December of that year featuring the artist’s new Flowers paintings. The source of the image Warhol appropriated for this series first appeared in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography, a photograph of hibiscus blossoms illustrating an article about color processing. Following the show at Castelli Gallery, critic David Bourdon described Warhol’s Flowers as “…cut out gouaches by Matisse set adrift on Monet’s lily pond” (The Village Voice, December 3, 1964). The color scheme is also highly evocative of Van Gogh’s Irises. Culling inspiration from a seemingly banal source, using a lithographic process, Warhol produced only two or three basic designs in a variety of color schemes, each in a square format. The artist found this format particularly satisfying because its regular shape allowed these paintings to be hung with any side up. As Warhol himself explained, “I like painting on a square…because you don’t have to decide whether it should be longerlonger or shorter-shorter or longer-shorter: it’s just a square” (D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 191). The following year, in May 1965, Warhol had another Flowers exhibition at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. The result was a dramatic installation of various sized paintings hung floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Still relatively new to his oeuvre, Warhol thought that “the French would probably like flowers because of Renoir and so on. Anyway [the artist himself explains] my last show in New York was flowers and it didn’t seem worthwhile trying to think up something new” (J. Ashbery, “Andy Warhol Causes Fuss in Paris,” New York Herald Tribune (European Edition), Paris, May 18, 1965). The artist set his irregular, roughly cut blossoms in a range of unnatural colors against either a blackened or color tinted grass background. Just as he did with Marilyn, here Warhol reduces the subject to its image — flattening, artificially coloring, and dismembering it. In so doing, he rids the flowers of their assumed vitality and prettiness. The present lot is a beaming example from this iconic series. The canvas is meticulously executed, using the same composition of the four hibiscus flowers against a green and black background. Each uniquely colored; their petals in jewel-like vibrant hues of phthalo green, rich aubergine and opalescent white. This work updates the age-old genre of still life; Warhol’s choice of a vibrant palette is consciously synthetic and an outright rejection of the complex color harmonies normally associated with the genre. In place of pain