Andy Warhol famously said “I want to be as famous as the Queen of England.” In 1985, he turned his attention to the monarchy by creating The Reigning Queens Series screenprints, a portfolio of sixteen works featuring female monarchs of the time. This iconic portfolio is considered Warhol’s largest portfolio of screenprints. The queens featured are Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Beatrix of Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland.
In this series, Warhol wholly embraces a pattern that heavily associated with its utilitarian and military purpose. The prints are colored in psychedelic colors, completely altering the print’s original identity as a disguise.
The Electric Chair Series is a manifestation of the mass public fascination with death and violence. Warhol employs the repetition in a powerful way as the multiplicity invariably desensitizes the viewer against the symbol of death and corporal punishment.
The series of ten screenprints is a nostalgic representations of America’s enchanted past. From the vibrant coloring to the icons’ dramatic expressions, each screen print reflects American glamour and theatricality.
The ten screenprints feature a collection of writers, actresses and scientists who are incredibly recognizable around the world. The series received negative feedback given that Warhol was Catholic and that he himself did not invest any interest in the subjects.
In the series of four screenprints, Warhol depicts the Roman Catholic church based in Cologne, Germany with dramatic flair, exaggerating its height and endowing it with bright rich colors.
In this portfolio of 6 screenprints, Andy Warhol pays tribute to Joseph Beuys, a German performance artist and sculptor who dominated the European art scene in the 80’s with his extensive works concerned with concepts such as humanism, social practice and social philosophy.
Marcel Duchamp was born in 1887 to a successful notary. Duchamp and his five siblings grew up in Blainville, Normandy. Their young lives were greatly influenced by art, resulting in four of them becoming artists themselves: Marcel, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, and Jacques Villon.
Ambroise Vollard was born in 1867 in the French colony of Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean. At age 19 he was sent to study law in Montpellier, France, and from there moved on to Paris at age 21.
Amélie Matisse, born Amélie Parayre, grew up in Beauzelle and Paris the daughter of Armand and Catherine Parayre. Not much is known about her young life, except that her parents were part of a political, free, and forward thinking circle.
Dora Maar was born Henriette Theodora Markovitch in Paris on November 22, 1907. She was the daughter of a Croatian architect, Joseph Markovitch, and a French woman named Julie Voisin.
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