Born to a working-class family in an immigrant ghetto in Pittsburgh, Andy Warhola capitalised on his artistic gifts and went on to make a name for himself in New York while building a remarkable portfolio of work in the fields of art, music, film-making, publishing and television. This is a brief summary of how he did it…

1928 – Andy Warhola is born in a back bedroom of a tiny apartment in Pittsburgh’s immigrant ghetto. His father, Andrej Warhola, works in construction and is mostly out of town during the week. His mother, Julia, is a home-maker who likes going to church more than material things. He has two older brothers, Paul and John, with whom he shares a bed. The family speaks Po Nasemu at home and Andy would grow up speaking broken English for a while.

Age 4 – Andy enrols in first grade but gets hit by a girl on the first day and goes home in tears, refusing to go back.

Age 6 – The Warholas have moved. Andy starts school at Holmes Elementary School which misunderstands Andy’s single day in first grade as a full year and places him in second grade when he enrols. All though grade school, his English improves, his art ability is recognised, and most of his friends are girls.

Age 8 – The Warholas move to a more middle-class neighbourhood called Oakland. Andy catches rheumatic fever and is away from school for months. He enjoys his time at home, lying in bed with comics and colouring books.

Age 9 – His teacher recommends him for a gifted children’s art class on Saturday mornings at the Carnegie Institute, which he would attend for the next 4 years. There, he is exposed to great art and also children from Pittsburgh’s upper class. He stands out as an artist even then.

Age 13 – Andy’s father dies from hepatitis-related peritonitis. Andy develops puberty-related acne, especially around the nose. After school, he hangs out at the local drugstore and draws people.

Age 16 – His mother Julia is diagnosed with colon cancer. She goes for a colostomy and Andy looks after her after school.

Age 17 – Andy joins the Carnegie Institute of Technology. When World War II ends, he nearly gets kicked out to make way for returning veterans but creates a big scene and cries and gets another chance. Meantime, he takes on a part-time job working for his brother, peddling fruits and vegetables door to door. When not selling fruit, he would stand on his brother’s truck and draw sketches of the neighbourhood women and children which he would sell for a quarter. That sketchbook gets Andy back into school and he wins the school’s award for finest work by student done over the summer and gets an exhibition of his drawings.

Later in college – He develops a unique drawing technique using a blotted line and soon attracts followers among his fellow art students. He decides to go into commercial art after school and concentrates on building a portfolio for that purpose. He also gets a part-time job at Joseph Horne, a top department store in Pittsburgh, getting paid to skim through fashion magazines to get ideas for window displays.

Age 20 – He enters a provocative painting into a juried art show titled ‘The Broad Gave Me My Face but I Can Pick My Own Nose’—a portrait of a young man with a finger in his nose. The judges argue over this painting and it gets publicity even when retitled as ‘Why Pick On Me’ and hung in the show of “rejects”. He also becomes the only male to join the modern-dance club. Meantime, he is also member of the film club and art director of Carnegie Tech’s literary magazine.

Age 21 – He graduates with a BFA. His friend Philip Pearlstein decides to go to New York and gets a cheap sublet on the Lower East Side. Andy joins him, boarding the train with his Carnegie Tech portfolio and $200.

First week in New York – He goes to see the art director for Glamour magazine and she ends up giving him 2 assignments. On his first assignment, the credit line misspells his name as ‘Warhol’ and that becomes the name he uses from then on.

Over the next years – Andy moves multiple times, living with various roommates, mostly dancers. A friend from Carnegie Tech introduces him to New York’s homosexual underground. He develops a big crush on award-winning writer Truman Capote and begins stalking him.

Age 24 – His mother moves in with him and shares his bedroom. Andy has his first art exhibit at the Hugo Gallery titled ‘15 Drawings Based on the Writing of Truman Capote’. Nobody buys anything and he gets only 1 lukewarm review in the press. His commercial art career, on the other hand, is flourishing. He is becoming one of the highest paid illustrators in America.

Age 25 – He and his mother move to a bigger apartment with two bedrooms but he continues to share a bedroom with his mother. They have many cats who reproduce and end up with even more cats. Andy gets his first boyfriend, Carl Willers, who he meets at the New York Public Library.

Age 27 – He has an operation on his nose to reduce it but it does not change his appearance. Since he is starting to lose hair, he buys a wig and it eventually becomes part of his signature style. He hires a paid studio assistant and gets his mother to do lettering for his commercial work. He gets his friends to work for free and rewards them with dinners and paid nights out in the town. He starts selling his commercial rejects at Serendipity’s—an ice-cream parlour.

Age 28 – Andy and television set designer friend, Charles Lisanby, make a trip around the world. They go to the Far East, Italy, France and England. Andy hopes for more with Charles but Charles doesn’t feel the same way.

Age 32 – Andy buys a four-storey town house on Lexington Avenue. His mother moves along with him. He is now top of the commercial art sector, both professionally and financially. He turns his sights to establishing himself as a serious artist but is rejected by galleries and goes into a depression. His mother nags him to send money home to his brothers who have growing families in Pittsburgh.

Age 34 – Andy paints soup cans. Irving Blum, a young art dealer from Los Angeles, offers him his first show at the Fergus Gallery in Los Angeles. Blum himself ends up buying the whole set of soup cans for $1000. (He would sell them in 1999 for $7million.)

After that – Andy continues doing pop images of soup cans and Coke bottles. He turns to silk-screening to make the process faster. When Marilyn Monroe commits suicide, he does a series of portraits on her. People start dropping by the townhouse day and night to hang out and Andy welcomes them. He gives his mother her own apartment on the street level of the house. When his brothers and family visit, he doesn’t introduce them to his friends. Out of his house, he attends events, pushing himself to get noticed. With the help of assistants, he produces a staggering amount of groundbreaking work.

Later that year – Gallery owner Eleanor Ward gives Andy his first show in New York. It sells out. He gives up commercial work.

Age 35 – Andy gets interviewed by the media and becomes famous. He creates his Disaster series—made of disturbing images like an electric chair— which becomes popular in Europe but not in America. He creates the ‘16 Jackies’ collection right after President John Kennedy is assassinated. He has a new boyfriend, stockbroker turned poet John Giorno.

Age 36 – Andy buys a Bolex 8mm and starts filming people. He goes on a road trip across America to Los Angeles. When in Hollywood, he shoots films and accumulates a growing entourage of young people eager to be in his films. His collection of Elvis portraits, exhibited at Fergus Gallery, however, does not sell and gets dismal reviews.

Back in New York – He moves into a warehouse space on the 5th floor of a loft building. He calls it The Factory and hires an off-Broadway lighting designer to design it. He starts entertaining at The Factory instead of his town house and attracts members from the swinging drug culture. He starts doing his famous ‘Screen Tests’. In April, a mural he is commissioned to do causes a furor and he does a show of Brillo boxes at Stable Gallery that does not sell. November, for his first show in the Leo Castelli Gallery, he presents his Flower series. In December, he wins the Sixth Annual Film Culture Award.

Age 37 – Andy meets socialite Edie Sedgwick, invites her to the Factory and starts putting her in his films. With her as his acquaintance, the upper class begins inviting him to their parties. In May, he brings her to the opening of his Flower series at Sonnabend Gallery in Paris and announces his retirement from painting. They have a falling out because he doesn’t pay her.

Age 38 – Andy meets the Velvet Underground and adds Nico to their band. They play together for the first time at a dinner for the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists. They then play at the Dom for a month then takes the show on the road. 6 months later, the unprofitable band dies out. His artwork is not profitable either. He makes a movie about The Chelsea Hotel and its inhabitants—‘Chelsea Girls’—and that becomes the first of his movies to make money.

Age 39 – To make extra money, he and his friends travel around college campuses giving lectures. The students are unimpressed and Andy eventually hires an impersonator to stand in for him. He meets Fred Hughes, makes him president of Andy Warhol Enterprises and gets him to sell his artworks while he focuses on making his next film, ‘Lonesome Cowboys’.

Age 40 – Andy gets shot by Valerie Solanas, founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) but survives. The Factory’s open-door policy ends. He lets Paul Morrissey take over making films. He meets Jed Johnson.

Age 41 – Andy starts Interview magazine. He also starts doing commissioned portraits at $25,000 per portrait.

Age 42 – His mother goes for a visit in Pittsburgh, has a stroke and never returns to New York. He designs a cover for the new Rolling Stones album. He does a series of artworks of world leaders.

Age 44 – His mother dies in a nursing home at age 80.

Age 46 – Andy movies into a new town house with Jed Johnson and their dachshunds. He starts compiling dated Time Capsules (made of his stuff) that he says will be valuable someday and auctioned off. He goes to compile about 600 such cartons.

Age 47 – He publishes ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’.

Age 49 – He paints his Hammer & Sickle still lifes, skull paintings and 103 shadow paintings.

Age 50 – ‘Bad’ the movie flops and Andy stops making movies altogether. His relationship with Jed Johnson (who directed the film) also ends.

Age 52 – He produces a show on cable television called Andy Warhol’s TV. He publishes a book with Pat Hackett called ‘POPism: The Warhol Sixties’.

Age 53 – He does the series ‘Myth, Dollar Signs, Crosses, Guns and Knives’. His work is exhibited around the world.

Age 54-58 – 23-year-old graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat charms Andy and they soon start painting together. They fall out eventually. Andy then exhibits his ‘Oxidation’ paintings from 1978—made from getting the Factory crowd to pee on canvases, and signs up with a modelling agency that books him for fashion shoots and magazines. Companies now commission him to glorify their products. He does more art and travels the world. Andy Warhol Television is shown on cable TV. He does his last series of self-portraits. He spends Christmas and Easter helping out a homeless shelter. He does his last great series based on ‘The Last Supper’.

Age 58 – Andy Warhol dies due to complications from gallbladder removal surgery.

1994, 7 years after his death – The Andy Warhol Museum opens in Pittsburgh. He goes on to become the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books and films.

More life summaries available here.

Photographs: Public domain. Compiler: Sy
If you found this article useful: