Andy Warhol For the Greens

MEET ANDY WARHOL (MEET YOU MUSEUM · IN SPACE) (BEIJING) ,
ANDY WARHOL THE POP IMAGE · MINSHENG ART MUSEUM - SHANGHÁI · CERAMIC ART AVENUE GALLERY - JINGDEZHEN · XIAMEN ART GALLERY - XIAMEN

Warhol, Andy

1980

Offset Litográfico

101 x 76,8 cm / Size with frame: 106 x 81 cm

Warhol met the German artist Joseph Beuys in 1979 at Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, Ger-
many, and the commission for these posters followed. Mayer organized an exhibition that featured Warhol’s
portraits of Beuys and Beuys’s portraits of Warhol. Beuys, highly politically involved with the German Green
Party, couldn’t resist asking Warhol to create a poster for the upcoming campaign.
Warhol executed the self-portrait that appears four times on each poster at different sizes. The artist’s
concerns regarding the political nature of the poster commission are reflected in his avoidance of a realistic
depiction of his face. The Green Party self-portraits are based on the central part of a pencil study for a triple
self-portrait probably drawn by Warhol in the late 1970s, depicting his face head-on and in two profiles.
With their large handwritten script, the posters were efficient enough in transmitting their message. Yet War
hol’s subtle, sketchy self-portrait was intended to remind Germans that he was an artist, not a politician.
*AWCP Nº.14