Mao. 1972.
Silkscreen in colors.
Feldmann/Schellmann/Defendi II. 91. Signed, numbered and inscribed "a.p." on verso as well as with stamped copyright notification. One of 50 artist copies aside from the edition of 250. On slightly smoothed board. 91,5 x 91,5 cm (36 x 36 in), the full sheet.
Sheet 2 from the series. Printed by Styria Studio, Inc., New York. Published by Castelli Graphics and Multiples, Inc. New York.

The artist, whose original name was Andy Warhola, began studying design in 1945 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He moved to New York in 1949 and soon became a successful advertising artist. Around the middle of the 1950s the artist began making his shoe drawings, the details of which are supposed to represent typical features of famous personalities. In 1959 he designed wrapping paper together with Nathan Gluck, which was printed with hand-made stamps. Warhol began making his comic-strip figures, such as Batman, Dick Tracy and Superman at the beginning of the 1960s, which were soon followed by his first portraits of Elvis and Marilyn as well as "Disaster", his "Do it Yourself" pictures and the Campbell's soup cans as icons of the American world of consumption. These silk-screen prints were exhibited in 1962 in the New York Stable Gallery and soon led to the artist's comet-like rise to fame. The artificiality of the consumer world became the artistic motto of Warhol and his assistants, who worked and lived together in the "Factory", Warhol's studio. This was where he produced his series covering the entire range of every-day-life and triviality, such as Coca Cola bottles or Dollar notes. Towards the end of the 1960s Warhol began concentrating on films, the theatre and multimedia happenings with the band "The Velvet Underground" - to him merely an extension of the painting medium. He also founded the journal "Interview". Warhol survived an attempted assassination by Valerie Solanas in 1968 in which he was shot and severely wounded. Warhol returned to painting as a medium in the 1970s and then collaborated with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente and produced the TV program "Andy Warhol Television".

Warhol‘s silkscreen "Mao" marked the transition from his first phase of print graphics in the 1960s to a second as of 1972. Even though he repeated the design principle of ten color variations of the same theme, for instance with the Marilyn portraits, but now the prints are made both simultaneously as well as equally to the paintings, and not only after the painted picture. "Mao is Warhol‘s first non-American motif, coincidentally made the same year as Richard Nixon‘s trip to China, making Mao a fascinating personality for the American public and thus an interesting object for Warhol. The Maos show […], that events considered a serious threat to the capitalist fundament of the 'American way of life', can be integrated in culture through art or fashion, accordingly, they suffer the loss of their revolutionary status. The Maos can also be interpreted as imitations of the innumerable Mao pictures and posters in China. […] Throuigh the effectual composition of pure and intensive colors Warhol turns Mao‘s serious and strict face into a series of funny and appealing caricatures." (Roberta Bernstein, in: Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, Andy Warhol. Prints. Catalog raisonné of graphic works, Munich/New York 1989, p. 11).By treating the portrait with lurid lipstick and eyeshadow, as with all his portraits, Warhol created a parody of the famous portrait of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, placing him in line with other icons of American consumerist culture, such as Marilyn, Campbell's soup tins and Mick Jagger.

Warhol is one of the most important members of Pop Art, who radically changed the perception of art and aesthetic with his works by varying the idea of Pop in his artistic work. By abandoning the claim for originality and creativity he was a precursor of later tendencies in the development of art: series instead of individuality was his motto. During his last years Warhol supported other artists like Keith Haring or Robert Mapplethorpe. After his death, his hometown Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania opened the 'Andy Warhol Museum' in his honor. [KH/CB].