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Property From a Private German Collector ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) UNTITLED (FLOWERS) signed "Andy ...

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Property From a Private German Collector ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) UNTITLED (FLOWERS) signed  Andy ...
Property From a Private German Collector
ANDY WARHOL
(1928-1987)
UNTITLED (FLOWERS)
signed "Andy Warhol"
on the overlap
silkscreen and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
22 x 22 in. (55.9 x 55.9 cm)
executed in 1964
ESTIMATE: $300,000-400,000

PROVENANCE
Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, zürich/st. moritz
For his first show at the Leo Castelli Gallery on November 21, 1964, Andy Warhol filled the gallery walls with silk
SCREENED paintings of flowers, their large blossoms lushly colored with day-glo hues. Warhol appropriated the flower image from a color photograph on seven hibiscus blossoms printed as a two-page foldout in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography; the image was originally intended to promote a Kodak color processor designed for amateur photographers. Once Warhol had cropped the image down to four flowers in a square arrangement, a format that would serve as the model for all of his flower paintings to follow, he sent the color photograph out to be converted into black and white silkscreens of various sizes. Warhol created a beautiful series of paintings based on this one singular image.
Warhol's Flower paintings crowned the end of an extraordinary year in which the artist had achieved notoriety with his Brillo boxes, his Most Wanted Men at the New York's World's Fair, and Empire, the lengthiest of his virtually motionless movies. Warhol built a career out of appropriating famous images and products - from Campbell's Soup and Coca-Cola to Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Elvis Presley - and he ultimately succeeded in transforming a basic color photograph of hibiscus flowers into a celebrated and central part of his œuvre.