Koller View 4/20

12 Andy Warhol (1928‒1987). From: Campbell’s Soup I. 1968. Colour screenprint. 138/250. 88.9 × 58.4 cm. Estimate: CHF 20 000/30 000 Brillo soap pads and Campbell’s tomato soup – these products were part of everyday life in the USA in the middle of the 20 th century. Andy Warhol established them in art history and in the collective pictorial memory by taking these common consumer goods out of their context and reproducing their images again and again. Andy Warhol and the now legendary cans made their first appearance at the artist’s first solo exhibition, held at the Fer- rus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, where Warhol presented 32 almost identical silkscreens on canvas, each showing one of the 32 existing varieties of Campbell’s soup. Warhol’s pragmatic commentary on his serial art production was simple: ’I love to do the same thing over and over again’. Later, other series followed: portrait variations of the Mona Lisa, of Mao Zedong, Joseph Beuys and Marilyn Monroe and, last but not least, stacked boxes of Brillo brand soap-impregnated steel wool pads. The first series of soup cans from 1962 has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1996. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2020, ProLitteris, Zurich