Andy Warhol

Life and work

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh on 6 August 1928, the son of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants, and died in New York on 22 February 1987. He trained in pictorial design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and spent the 1950s in New York as one of the best paid commercial illustrators in the city. From 1962 he turned the tools of that trade on painting, using photo-silkscreen to put soup cans, dollar bills, car crashes and film stars on canvas, and the studio he called the Factory became the centre of a scene that took in film, publishing and the band the Velvet Underground. He was shot and nearly killed in 1968. Commissioned portraits and an enormous body of printmaking carried the last two decades. The Whitney Museum of American Art gave him in 2018 the first full retrospective mounted in the United States since 1989.

Disciplines and how they differ

The paintings are one market and the prints are another, and they are not close. What passes through most salerooms, including this one, is the printed work: screenprints issued in editions, usually of two hundred and fifty or fewer, published by Factory Additions, by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts or by European publishers, and catalogued by Feldman and Schellmann with the F. and S. numbers every specialist quotes. All eight lots offered at LLB Auction have been prints or screenprints. Within that printed work the spread is wide. The 1960s icons, Marilyn above all, sit at the top. The 1980s portfolios, Ads, Myths, Endangered Species and Reigning Queens, occupy a broad middle. The smaller late images sit well below.

What a specialist examines

Where the signature is, and whether there is one. Prints of the 1960s such as the 1967 Marilyn are commonly signed with initials and stamp numbered on the reverse rather than signed in pencil on the face, which surprises sellers who expect a pencil signature. Prints published by Ronald Feldman are signed and numbered in pencil and carry the publisher's and the artist's copyright inkstamps on the reverse, so the verso has to be photographed. The support is diagnostic: Lenox Museum Board for the Feldman portfolios, wove paper for the earlier series. Roman numeral impressions, artist's proofs and trial proofs are separate populations and price separately, and a unique colour variant trial proof is not the same object as a numbered impression. Condition is where value goes. These are flat screened colours on unvarnished sheets, so light staining, mat burn, cockling and any weakening of the fugitive colours are read hard, and a trimmed sheet is heavily discounted against one with full margins.

Market position

Phillips holds the deepest published record for the printed work. In New York in October 2020 a 1967 Marilyn, stamp numbered from the edition of 250, made USD 315,000. In the same city in October 2023 Bighorn Ram from Endangered Species made USD 139,700 and a unique screenprint of 1972, Sunset, made USD 127,000. In London in January 2019 an impression of Rebel Without a Cause (James Dean) from Ads, one of ten in Roman numerals, made GBP 68,750. In London in June 2024 Queen Elizabeth II from Reigning Queens made GBP 165,100 and a Mao made GBP 48,260, while two impressions of Saint Apollonia in that same sale made GBP 15,240 and GBP 11,430. Each figure includes the buyer's premium as the house prints it.

What a seller should have ready

Photographs of the sheet including all four margins, and of the whole reverse, where the numbering and the inkstamps live. The exact sheet measurement in centimetres, because trimming is the commonest defect and the hardest to see in a photograph taken square on. The edition number exactly as written, distinguishing an arabic number from a Roman numeral, an artist's proof and a trial proof. The publisher, if one is stamped. A recent condition report noting staining, cockling, mat burn and colour strength. And the purchase history, since with an artist reproduced on this scale the chain of ownership does much of the work.