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Screenprint With Diamond Dust on Lenox Museum Board. Hand signed and numbered lower front by Andy Warhol. Edition 134/200 (aside from the editions of 30 Artist’s Proofs, 5 Printer’s Proofs, 5 Exhibition Proofs, and 30 trial proofs). From the Myths Portfolio. Published by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc., NY. Printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, NY. Sheet size 38 x 38 inches. Framed.
Artwork is in excellent condition. All reasonable offers will be considered.
Uncle Sam 259 by Andy Warhol is a screen print from the artist’s Myths portfolio created in 1981. Drawn to the dazzling world of Hollywood, Warhol made a name for himself by creating celebrity portraits starring the most prominent names in entertainment, including Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and Mick Jagger. He soon expanded his collection to incorporate central figures in sports, science, and politics, with prints like Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Jimmy Carter. Warhol’s Myths explores the theme of celebrity from a fresh standpoint, with the inclusion of fictional characters. Most of these figures arise from familiar bedtime stories, allegorical tales, ancient folklore, or classic television shows and films; they capture the magic of America’s captivating and commanding past. One print stands apart from the rest: Uncle Sam 259. This print traverses beyond the realm of popular culture into propaganda and politics, as a long-standing symbol of American patriotism.
About the Artist: Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, Warhol responded to mass-media culture of the 1960s. His silkscreens of cultural and consumer icons—including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and Brillo Boxes—would make him one of the most famous artists of his generation. “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do,” he once explained. Born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, he graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. Moving to New York to pursue a career in commercial illustration, the young artist worked for magazines such as Vogue and Glamour. Though Warhol was a gay man, he kept much of his private life a secret, occasionally referencing his sexuality through art. This is perhaps most evident in his drawings of male nudes from the 1950s, and later in his film Sleep (1963), which portrays the poet John Giorno nude. In 1964, Warhol rented a studio loft on East 47th street in Midtown Manhattan which was later known as The Factory. The artist used The Factory as a hub for movie stars, models, and artists, who became fodder for his prints and films. The space also functioned as a performance venue for The Velvet Underground. During the 1980s, Warhol collaborated with several younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. The artist died tragically following complications from routine gall bladder surgery at the age of 58, on February 22, 1987 in New York, NY. After his death, the artist’s estate became The Andy Warhol Foundation and in 1994, a museum dedicated to the artist and his oeuvre opened in his native Pittsburgh. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others. A major retrospective of Warhol’s work took place at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 2019.
