Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Colored Campbell’s Soup Can 1965 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas. 36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm). Signed “Andy Warhol” on the reverse.
Provenance Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; Collection; Marchese Carlo Durazzo, Florence; Collection Mr. & Mrs. Leo Castelli, New York; Private collection, Sweden Exhibited London, Mayor Gallery, Summer Selection from the Sixties, July 21 – October 9, 1991 Literature R. Crone, Andy Warhol New York/Washington, 1970, no. 521, p. 306; G. Frei, N. Prinz, and S. King-Nero, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, Volume 02B, Zurich/New York, cat. no. 1866, p. 203 (illustrated) and p. 205 Catalogue Essay Why did you start painting soup cans? “Because I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again. Someone said my life has dominated me; I liked that idea. I used to want to live at the Waldorf Towers and have soup and a sandwich, like that scene in the restaurant in Naked Lunch.” (Andy Warhol interviewed by G. Swanson, “What is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters (Part I)”, Art News, New York, November, 1963). Andy Warhol in what began as a commission for the Campbell Soup Company in 1964, created this series of ‘portraits’ of an everyday item, the tomato soup label emblazoned with day-glo colors onto canvas, which soon became irrefutable symbols of the Pop Art movement. His simple technique, using the same silk screening method he mastered in the Flowers series which precedes the Colored Campbell’s Soup Cans, secured for Warhol, more than any other image of his creation, the preeminent post held throughout his career as a generation’s taste-maker and the American avant-garde artist. Further, it would be this technique which would characterize Warhol’s artistic oeuvre for the rest of his career, foreshadowing his extremely iconic imagery that followed. The present lot, completed in 1965, was once in the personal collection of Leo Castelli. The painting hung in Castelli’s New York bedroom during Warhol’s epoch. Evidently Castelli held this painting in high esteem as it served as both a symbol of Castelli’s own career, and more importantly of Warhol’s successful immergence on the critical art world. Castelli was instrumental in shaping Warhol’s early career and no doubt the dealer selected this work out of personal affection. Through statements made by Warhol at the time, we know that his pivotal concern in the production of the Soup Cans was the routine process through which the silk screening evolved. Having just moved his studio into a much larger space on 47th Street, known colloquially as The Factory, Warhol’s works in 1965 signify the transition his artwork took as a result of the new studio space. In essence, The Factory which most often conjures imagery of Warhol’s social status and exuberant personality, was in actuality also a literal model of the American factory. The production of the Campbell’s Soup Cans, overseen by Warhol, was done with a deliberately industrial, machine-like methodology, the artist acknowledging the consumerist, commercial appeal to not only the symbol of the soup can he portrays but also to how his representation of it was fabricated from the very beginning. For the artist, the principle ingredient in his process was the very essence of mass-production. He was the designer, choosing paint colors and application, but the scale of mass production appealed to him as it served an appropriate metaphor to the subject he chose. In an interview in 1963 Warhol explains how the materiality appealed to him as it manifests itself within the scope and aim of Pop Art. When asked if Pop Art is a fad, he responds: “Yes, it’s a fad, but I don’t see what difference it makes. I just heard a rumor that G. quit working, that’s she’s given up art altogether. And everyone is saying how awful it is that A. gave up his style and is doing it in a different way. I don’t think so at all. If an artist can’t do any more, then he should just quit; and an artist ought to be able to change h