Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola)

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Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola) bigraphy, stories - An American artist, a king of pop-art

Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola) : biography

06 August 1928 – 22 February 1987

On the 6th of August in 1928, in an American city Pittsburg, a boy Adrew Warhola was born, who afterwards became one of the most contradictory and famous people in the art of the twentieth century. His parents, Andrew and Julia Warhola, were Polish from a village in the Carpatihian Mountains, who went to the United States because of strict poverty. A polish name Warhola changed into Warhol, but they didn’t manage to become rich in America – especially because except Andy there were three other boys in the family.

A future artist’s childhood was difficult – mainly because of his own character. His father died early, and while elder brothers were knocking the ball around on he streets of dirty and smoky industrial town, Andy, an unhealthy boy and a real weakling by appearance, was sitting at home, near his mother, he was afraid to go outside, where he was always offended and bitten by neighbour boys. School was a real penal servitude for him, and the only delight was his own worktable, where he drew pictures, made collages, cutting out pictures from old magazines, made out stories and read cheap comic books. He didn’t learn how to write grammatically – but his pictures amazed all the street, because they were so unusual. The strange boy drew Great Garbo, who married Mickey Mouse, or an American president, who was sitting in a Santa Clause’s sack, and Santa Clause himself was a gangster, who had been killed in skirmish…

After finishing the school Andy Warhol spent all family savings to pay for his study. He entered the California technical university on the design department. This university was considered as very prestigious, and mainly children of rich families studied there. On their background a silent Andy in his ordinary sweater, stained with paints, looked like a square peg in a round hole, and he realized that perfectly. He considered himself very ugly, and students of the same year later remembered that Warhol looked like a refined rabbit. But he had a serious advantage over other students – his unquestionable and huge talent. Soon everybody knew abou it, and “the rabbit” became to be loved and felt sorry for. Even professors felt sympathy for him, in spite of the fact that instead of given classic models Andy drew beggars of children. Teachers thought that he tried to stand out with such shocking tricks, but Andy just drew what he saw, when he was working in a market, earning extra money. The majority of students studied to obtain a prestigious diploma, but Warhol wanted to become famous and rich, and he knew that he would have o return in poor area.

There was only one way to fame: to become a star in New York, in the centre of artistic galleries and artistic life. during the university holidays Andy’s friends took him to New York and helped to get acquaintances in fashionable magazines, and soon many people became interested in the young artist’s pictures. In 1949 Andy finished studying and rented a cheap studio in New York and started to make the round of advertising agencies and editorial offices. A year later he managed to get his first order. An advertisement of shoes, which Warhol made, was very outstanding, and footwear company’s selling rose. Another early work for a radio station was recognized as “an advertisement of a year” – it represented a teenage boy, who was making an injection in his hand. In spite of such a scandalous and provocative subject, rating of the programs about youth problems also rose considerably, and the author of this advertisement got a reputation of an artist, who better than others caught trends of time and could make advertisement images from them.

Andy was working hard and wholeheartedly, and in occasional free minutes he wrote touching letters to Hollywood stars, begging them to send him an autograph or a personal souvenir. His sense of admiration for famous people was perfectly childish and remained even when Warhol himself became a world-wide known person.