Busacca Gallery

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) Cow, ca. 1966 Screenprint on wallpaper, pink on a yellow ground. Approximate paper size: 30 1/4 × 45 7/8 inches. Printed with “Andy Worhol” and “trim” along one edge, with “trim” printed on the opposing edge. Unframed. By the early 1960s, Andy Warhol had become a highly successful commercial illustrator and was among the artists independently embracing the emerging language of Pop Art. Alongside figures such as Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol helped define a movement that elevated everyday imagery to the realm of fine art. Soon dubbed the “Pope of Pop,” Warhol adopted popular and commercial subjects as his primary visual vocabulary. Cow is a quintessential example of this philosophy. True to Warhol’s belief that art should be taken at face value, he encouraged viewers to see his images as purely surface—without hidden meaning or narrative beneath. Condition: The sheet has been rolled for shipping and shows very slight, repeating creases (approximately six) from indentation by the mailing tube, primarily visible on the verso. There is minor handling wear along the edges, slight yellowing at the top edge with faint surface soiling, and a small crease in the yellow area at the lower edge. One end of the paper shows slight discoloration from age on the verso. A few minor surface scuffs are visible only in raking light. Overall, the condition is good.

Andy Warhol’s Cow wallpaper print, first produced in 1966, emerged at a pivotal moment when Pop Art was challenging traditional boundaries between fine art, design, and mass production. Conceived as wallpaper rather than a singular, precious artwork, Cow was originally installed in repeating panels for Warhol’s exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, transforming the gallery walls themselves into the artwork. By selecting an ordinary, even banal subject and rendering it in unnaturally bright, high-contrast colors, Warhol emphasized repetition, commercial aesthetics, and the flattening of meaning that defined Pop Art. The work reflects Warhol’s embrace of industrial processes and his rejection of expressive depth, asserting that art could function like advertising—immediate, decorative, and endlessly reproducible. Today, individual sheets from the Cow wallpaper are regarded as iconic artifacts of 1960s Pop culture, representing Warhol’s radical redefinition of what constituted an artwork and how it could be experienced.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_worhol

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.