Bellagio Gallery of Fine art ANDY WARHOL: THE CELEBRITY PORTRAITS TO DEBUT AT BELLAGIO GALLERY OF FINE ART IN FEBRUARY 2003
Award-winning performer, Warhol confidante Liza Minnelli to narrate exhibition audio tour
Andy Warhol: The Celebrity Portraits, a collection of more than 50 renowned paintings and works on paper, will debut at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in February 2003. Warhol’s work will be on view to the public Feb. 7 through Sept. 7, 2003.
An audio tour of the exhibition will be narrated by Liza Minnelli, personal friend of Andy Warhol and the winner of an Oscar, three Tony Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy.
The exhibition will cover Warhol's obsession with fame and celebrity as manifested in his art. Among the works on view are portraits of celebrities from three decades: the 1960s with Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor; the 1970s with Mick Jagger, Dennis Hopper, and Mao Tse-Tung; and the 1980s with Deborah Harry, Sylvester Stallone, and Michael Jackson. The paintings are on loan from the Mugrabi collection, one of the single largest personal collections of Warhol's work. In addition to the paintings, the exhibition will feature one of the last complete sets of the famed 1967 Marilyn Monroe screen-print portfolio.
Liza Minnelli's narration of the exhibition will provide visitors with personal insights into the relationships between the artist and his subjects. "Her stories and first-hand descriptions of events that shaped Warhol's life and work will transport the audience to the early days of Pop art, the flourishing New York scene in the 1970s, and the heady days and nights of Studio 54," said Andrea Bundonis, president of the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.
The son of Czechoslovakian immigrants, Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928. He entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1945, where he majored in pictorial design. Upon graduation, he moved to New York where his early career was marked by enormous success as an illustrator for such magazines as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, and Glamour. Warhol’s first solo show in New York in 1952 was followed by inclusion in a 1956 group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Throughout the 1960s, Warhol created what would become some of the most recognizable icons of twentieth-century art including the Campbell's Soup Cans, and his series devoted to Marilyn Monroe. His obsession with celebrity also led him to co-found Interview Magazine in 1969. A groundbreaking artist, Warhol blurred the boundaries between popular culture and fine art. He eventually became known as a celebrity himself, hobnobbing with some of the most famous entertainers, writers, and fashion designers of the twentieth-century. Warhol died in 1987 following routine gall bladder surgery. A museum devoted to his art opened in his hometown of Pittsburgh in 1994.
