Andy Warhol - Cow Screen Print (FS II.11)
Artist: Andy Warhol
Year: 1966
Medium: Screenprint on wallpaper
Edition: Edition unlimited with 100 signed with a rubber stamp and numbered on verso; some dated on recto. Published for an exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, April 2nd-April 27th, 1966. This edition is not signed.
Size: 45.5 x 29.75 in.
Original Cow Print by Andy Warhol
The Cow series, which Warhol worked on from 1966 to 1976, subverted expectations. However, it wasn’t the Pop artist’s first time using an uncanny subject. Through soup cans, passenger tickets and electric chairs, Warhol expressed a desire to shake up the art world. In addition, his Flowers series displayed the wide range of his capabilities. If flowers could be Pop, why not cows? Still, the art world associated Warhol’s work with star power and commercialism rather than the natural world. He composed Cow 11, one of five prints in the series, during the final days of the Whitney Museum’s Warhol exhibition in 1971.
In the early 1960’s, Warhol and his close friend Ted Carey visited the Leo Castelli Gallery. There the pair met art dealer Ivan Karp. After introducing them to one of Roy Lichenstein’s paintings, Karp agreed to come by Warhol’s apartment to see his work. He loved Warhol’s straightforward pieces while Warhol appreciated Karp’s laid-back style of art dealing. “I had a very good rapport with Ivan right away,” Warhol said. “He was young, he had an ‘up’ attitude to everything.” Karp later inspired Warhol’s Cow series.
Warhol’s Cows were printed in New York by Bill Miller’s Wallpaper Studio, Inc.
