Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an American artist and producer. He was born in 1928 and died in 1987, he was known as a leading figure in pop art in the 20th Century. He was one of the first artists in the 20th Century to legitimise the screenprinting as a fine art technique, although screenprinting has been around for centuries, Andy Warhol contributed to bringing the practice more into the mainstream in the 1960’s. When Andy Warhol went into screenprinting in 1962, he used his own drawings for the stencils but later on, he used photo-silkscreen, which used a template of a photograph as the stencil. This created a much cleaner image which Andy Warhol found more preferable.

Andy Warhol published many of his screenprints on his own, but also worked with a number of printmakers during his career. His screenprints were of consumer and cultural icons including Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.