Andy Warhol
“The idea is not to live forever; it is to create something that will.”
There are few things more highly-prized in the 21st century than the opportunity to live with an original work by Warhol. Since his death in 1987 the price of his work at auction has increased on average by a staggering 3400%. Auction sales of his work fetched $348 million in 2021, making him the third most highly-traded artist globally. In May 2022 Shot Sage Blue Marilyn was sold at Christie's New York for $195 million, setting the record for an American artist at auction and becoming the most expensive piece of 20th century art sold in a public sale.
This is Warhol's world...we're just living in it. He understood contemporary life in ways that we are still coming to terms with; his prediction that "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes" was extraordinarily prescient, and he essentially came to define the idea of the contemporary megastar artist. More than any other figure, he understood how the reproduced image has come to shape our response to the world and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Having achieved international success as a painter and filmmaker, Warhol "retired" from painting in 1966 with a show at the Leo Castelli Gallery that was decorated with his printed Cow wallpaper. Shortly afterwards he founded his own print studio, Factory Additions, and set about redefining contemporary notions of what printmaking should be. Printing was a way of elevating the inner world of the artist to a public performance; being 'in print' suggested desirability and a commercial demand that couldn't be satisfied with one-off artworks that could only be owned by one collector at a time. Warhol once declared that "repetition adds up to reputation", a fact confirmed many times over by his stellar market performance. The vernacular of printmaking is bound up in his philosophy to an extent unparalleled in 20th century art. There is no better - or more appropriate - entry point to his work.
If you would like more information on investing in Stella, why not take a look at some of our most recent articles featuring his prints.
