Andy Warhol's Marilyn

The paintings are known for their mass production and use of the silkscreen technique, which was a hallmark of Warhol's work.

The Marilyn Series

The Marilyn series is considered one of the most important in Warhol's career and a landmark in the pop art movement.

In the 1960s, American artist Andy Warhol created various "mass-produced" images from photographs of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Jackie Onassis.

Marilyn's portrait is undoubtedly one of the most famous and reproduced in Art History.

Although Andy and Marilyn never met, he immortalized her with the creation of her most important portrait, a lasting icon where artist and muse unite as one: star, myth, and legend.

On the occasion of Marilyn Monroe's suicide in August 1962, Warhol used this image for his silkscreen. It was an advertisement made by Gene Korman for the 1953 film Niagara.

The canvas is prepared using a photographic process, and then different colored inks are printed using a rubber roller to press the ink onto the painting through the canvas. Initially, many viewers received this new marriage between art and consumer culture with little enthusiasm.

Andy was fascinated by morbid concepts. Sometimes, however, the results seemed surprisingly beautiful, like the resonant and colorful images of Marilyn Monroe. The Marilyn screens were early examples of the use of silkscreen.

Warhol explains:

In August '62, I started doing silkscreen. I wanted something stronger that gave more line-of-production effect. With silkscreen, you choose a photograph, blow it up, transfer it with glue to the silk, and then pass the ink over it so that the ink passes through the silk but not the glue. That way, you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple, fast, and reckless. I was thrilled by it. When Marilyn Monroe died that month, I had the idea of making the screens of her lovely face, the first Marilyns...