An American Story

The spring season of the Sara Hildén Art Museum opened with an exhibition of Andy Warhol, king of pop art. The exhibition presented around 150 works coming from famous institutions such as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Albertina and the MUMOK in Vienna, and great historical collections such as the Sonnabend and the Ronald Feldman in New York. These masterpieces provided an overview of the crucial years in the career of Andy Warhol, an artist who, while denying he was such, shook the foundations of the academic world of painting and criticism in the second half of the 20th century, changing forever the image of America, and with it, of modern contemporary society.

Curated by Walter Guadagnini and Claudia Zevi, the exhibition was organized in thematic sections, providing for the first time a differentiated and surprising view of Warhol´s inspiration – its reasons, its links and its variety – ranging from the extraordinary season of Pop Art to the pathos of his portraits of Marilyn, Liz and Jackie, to his denunciation of violence in American society, to the lesser known abstract works of his last period.

With him, for the first time, the abrasive obtrusiveness of images, the advent of the star system, the standardization of modern myths, the interaction of the media with crucial events in the history of the United States, the centrality of consumer goods in daily life, are shown in all their diverse reality. As demonstration of Warhol´s versatility, of his ability to express himself utilizing all the means available to the contemporary artist, from traditional canvases, drawings and graphic works to photography, serial images and cinema, in an infinite variation of themes and techniques, the exhibition presented works created in a wide range of procedures.

Life, death and society: these are Warhol´s most famous icons. Through Campbell´s Soup, Marilyn, Liz Taylor, Mick Jagger and John Lennon, but also Jacqueline Kennedy and Mao Zedong, through the electric chair and race riots, the exhibition surveys American history in its consumerism, its star system, its political leaders and events. Warhol also narrates the tragedy that struck Naples with the earthquake of 1981, representing it on the pages of newspapers or by the simple black line of a seismograph, and lastly by his homage to the city, an exceptional series of great paintings of Vesuvius. And in his final season, he is still surprising, still inventing new series. Eggs and spools of thread become gigantic abstract paintings confirming once more that, since Andy Warhol, art has never been the same.