Andy Warhol

Obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and mechanical reproduction, Pop artist Andy Warhol created some of the 20th century's most iconic images. He drew widely from popular culture and everyday subject matter in his most famous works: his 32 Campbell's soup cans, Brillo pad box sculptures, and portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, for example. Rejecting the dominant painting and sculpting modes of his day, Warhol embraced silk-screen printmaking to achieve his characteristic hard edges and flat areas of color. The artist mentored Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and continues to influence contemporary art around the world: His provocative successors include Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami, and Jeff Koons. Warhol has been the subject of exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou, among other institutions. His works have sold for upwards of $100 million at auction.