If Goya painted still lifes with meats, fish, and rich foods, Andy Warhol went a step further and immortalized soups, but this time already prepared and canned, just about to be poured onto the plate. Perhaps we were facing a still life of the modern era of haste; but, above all, we were witnessing the birth of a new way of understanding the brush; Pop Art. A pictorial movement where mundane objects demanded to leap from the kitchen cupboard to the walls of art galleries. Along the way, Andy Warhol learned to monetize his art from the very first minute and discovered early on that advertising and art could be a very well-suited marriage. 

The American artist was born in Pittsburgh in 1928, and perhaps we owe this particular explosion of art to the onset of a childhood illness—popularly known as ‘St. Vitus' Dance’—which forced him to stay at home, dipping brushes for his amusement in the absence of tablets, television, and other contemporary trifles. The ‘first stone’ of an artist had just been laid.

Andrew Warhola turned 21 and, with a graduate degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in hand, he showed up in New York ready to take the advertising scene by storm with graphic design work for prestigious magazines like ‘Vogue’ or ‘Glamour’. Along the way, he ‘drew’ a new name for himself, so he used a diminutive and dropped the ‘a’ from his surname. He had shed his ballast and could begin to fly as an artist. 

With some financial comfort, Andy Warhol burst onto the scene with his particular revisions of Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, or the face of the actress of the moment, Marilyn Monroe. The most emblematic figures of the era began to be passed through the Warholian sieve: Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and even Michael Jackson, among many others who began to vie with the soup can for the spotlight. It seems they succeeded, as his latest art auctions, like the one of the first lady, are impressive. This latter one, «Sixteen Jackies», has reached a bid of 20.2 million dollars.

However, Warhol also cultivated a taste for music that led him to meet The Velvet Underground, with Lou Reed, in 1965, and he decided to become the manager of the legendary band. For them, he designed an album cover, his iconic yellow banana. After this debut in the scene, many other works for artists of the stature of Aretha Franklin, Paul Anka, or even Spain's own Miguel Bosé would follow. 

Of course, from the beginning to the end of his time in this world -1987-, Andy Warhol was accompanied by that air of an eccentric -albino wig and deathly pale complexion- and controversial figure, but what is a genius without his share of strangeness. A normal guy, and nobody wants autographs from those.

Signed, Ana Durá