Andy Warhol - Joseph Beuys in Memoriam (1986)

Andy Warhol's Homage to Joseph Beuys: The Artwork Joseph Beuys in Memoriam (1986)

In the artwork Joseph Beuys in Memoriam (1986) Andy Warhol shows the post-war artist Joseph Beuys in front of a camouflage background. Warhol produced this limited silkscreen edition based on a Polaroid that the artist had personally taken of Beuys in 1979. The limited edition of 90 silkscreen prints was intended to commemorate the death and life of his contemporary in year 1986.

In addition, our specimen comes from the Art collection of Lucio Amelio, a leading Italian art dealer and gallery owner for contemporary art. Amelio was a long-time friend of Joseph Beuys and once organized a party for Warhol and Beuys in Naples in 1980. Thus, the artwork has a good provenance.

The artwork is from a larger series by Joseph Beuys. Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys met for the first time in Düsseldorf in May 1979. Around seven months later, the two met again in New York and a kind of friendship developed between the two artists that lasted from then on. Warhol once said of Joseph Beuys: " I like Beuys' politics. He should come to America and become politically active there. That's great... he should be president. "

The most important features of the artwork

About Andy Warhol

Pop artist Andy Warhol was obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture and mechanical production and created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Warhol drew heavily on motifs from popular culture and everyday objects. He created works such as his 32 Campbell's Soup Cans (1962), Brillo block box sculptures and portraits of Marilyn Monroe, using the medium of screen printing to achieve his characteristic hard edges and flat areas of colour. Warhol was also a mentor to artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His pop sensibility is now common practice, taken up by major contemporary artists such as Richard and Jeff Koons. This is another reason why Andy Warhol is still number 1 in the Global Artist Ranking.