Good Business: Andy Warhol’s Screenprints

Good Business: Andy Warhol’s Screenprints examines why screenprints are an essential part of Warhol’s body of work. Facilitating experimentation and mass distribution, prints can be simultaneously challenging and accessible.

Warhol embraced mechanical processes early in his career and found in screenprinting the perfect vehicle for image repetition, both for his works on canvas and for portfolios of prints on paper. Through collaborations with his studio assistants and established print publishers, Warhol generated nearly 20,000 prints throughout his career. Screenprinting techniques allowed him to create series of images in an assortment of color variations, resulting in one of his most recognizable signatures (the same image rendered in different colorways), while the ability to generate editions of prints on paper enabled collectors to acquire masterworks at (relatively) affordable prices. The salability of prints also raised funds for causes that were personally important to him.

Good Business: Andy Warhol’s Screenprints provides insight into the screenprinting process and highlights how Warhol used this technique to explore familiar themes throughout his career. Warhol was many things—a painter, photographer, film director, entrepreneur and commercial artist. Printmaker is a critical part of that extensive resume.

Andy Warhol, $ (1), 1982, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.