Thirty years almost to the day after the death of the great American artist, Palazzo Ducale in Genoa and 24 ORE Cultura dedicate a major retrospective to Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, August 6, 1928 – New York, February 22, 1987).
Curated by Luca Beatrice, produced and organized by Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura di Genoa, and by 24 ORE Cultura-Gruppo 24 ORE, the exhibition showcases about 170 works including paintings, prints, drawings, Polaroids, sculptures, objects from private collections, museums and foundations both private and public, Italian and foreign.
The theme of the exhibition is represented by six different sections: the icons, the portraits, the drawings, the artist’s important relationship with Italy, the Polaroids, communication and advertising. It is a show that spans the activity of the most famous, most popular artist of the twentieth century. Andy Warhol marked the beginning of the contemporary art age as we know it. Just as we divide Pop music into before and after the Beatles, the only cultural and media-related phenomenon of the 1960s that can truly be compared with Warhol, then we also need to divide art into “Before Andy” and “After Andy”. Most importantly, Andy Warhol understood and was capable of anticipating the deep-seated changes that contemporary society was about to witness beginning with the Pop years, when artwork began liaising on a day-to-day basis with the society of mass media, goods, and consumerism. The Factory in New York was not just a place where paintings and screenprints were made: this was where cinema, rock music, and publishing were being created, where new experimental languages were being tested in a never-ending search for the avant-garde. Warhol also manifested a remarkable understanding of the power of television, the new medium par excellence in his day, and if he had lived longer he would no doubt have embraced the social networks and web communication of our time as well.
The exhibition ends with a video in which the curator Luca Beatrice talks to visitors about the life and work of Andy Warhol.
The exhibition will end February 26, 2017.