Dollar sign (9) Solo A, 1982

Before assuming his place in history, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) as a commercial illustrator in New York for over a decade. Although he began painting in the late 1950s, he emerged into the spotlight in 1962 when he exhibited wooden replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes, along with paintings of Coca-Cola bottles, and his infamous Campbell’s soup cans. Warhol’s mass-producing silkscreen technique was key in reducing his depictions into insipid and dehumanized cultural icons that reflected the alleged emptiness of American material culture, along with Warhol’s own emotional withdrawal towards his creations. Eventually, Warhol’s work propelled him to the forefront of the emerging Pop art movement in America.