Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was an American artist, the most famous figure of Pop Art and a defining force in twentieth-century visual culture. His images of soup cans, Marilyns and car crashes, his Factory, magazine Interview, his films (Sleep, Chelsea Girls) and performances dissolved the boundaries between art, celebrity and commerce.

Born Andrew Warhola to Slovak immigrant parents in Pittsburgh, he became the centripetal figure of New York's avant-garde in the 1960s and a philosopher of the "fifteen minutes of fame." Warhol invented himself as a public artwork, and his books — from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol to Fame — are stocked with the wit and blankness that made him American art's largest export.