Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s.

A prolific artist who produced a wide variety of paintings, drawings, prints, and media works, Warhol is most famous for his work on canvas; however, he also worked in a variety of other media including but not limited to silk screens, film, video and sculpture.

Andy Warhol gained recognition as a painter, photographer, filmmaker and author. He was an influential member of the pop art movement that thrived in New York in the 1960s. The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art is located in his hometown of Pittsburgh.

The artist was born Andrzej Warhola on Aug. 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood. His parents were Latvian immigrants who settled in America during World War I. They used the Anglicized “Andrew” when he was born, but later switched to the more American-sounding “Andy.”

As a child, Warhol enjoyed drawing, painting and playing the piano. In high school, he studied commercial art and entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) at age 16 to study fine arts.

Toward the end of his life, he began calling himself a “painter” rather than a “pop artist,” saying he had stopped making many pop-related works five years earlier because they were no longer fresh to him or compellingly new. Instead, he concentrated on portraits of friends and celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor and Mick Jagger.

In February 1987, just three months before his death on Feb. 22 at age 58 from complications following gall

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. His parents were working-class emigrants from Mikó, Slovakia. His father was a truck driver who earned extra money performing magic tricks; his mother worked in a factory.

The family moved to Johnstown when Andy was 4 years old. He liked to draw and paint as a child, but he didn’t get serious about art until the age of 10 when he began copying comic strips such as Popeye and Superman. He attended evening classes at the Carnegie Institute of Technology during his teens and graduated with a degree in Fine Arts in 1949. In 1951, he moved to New York City, where he supported himself with odd jobs while trying to break into the art world.

In 1956, after having spent time in Los Angeles and Paris, Warhol returned to New York and began making drawings of celebrities from magazines — usually from pictures taken from a distance or from television. This technique became known as “superstar” painting . Warhol based this style on the work of the German artist Max Beckmann (1884 – 1950). These works were displayed in various galleries around the city and sold for $100 each.

Warhol’s first solo exhibition was held at the Hugo Gallery in

Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola and Julia Zavacky Warhola (known as Julia Warhola). Andy’s father had immigrated to the United States from what is now the Czech Republic. His mother had immigrated from what is now known as Slovakia. The family spoke Slovak at home.

When he was thirteen years old, Andy started working after school in a shoe-polish factory to help support his family. He also worked as an usher at a movie theater and played poker with neighborhood boys for pennies.

During his high school years, Andy began to take classes at night at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT). Although he did not graduate, he later attended lectures there given by Max Beckmann and Pablo Picasso. Some of his drawings were on display in a student art show.

At age sixteen, Andy graduated from Schenley High School in 1945 and enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology, but left after two semesters, having decided that college was not for him. His formal education ended then; he never earned a degree or took another course after that.

He was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he was 11, his father died of a heart attack brought on by the stress of financial hardship. Andy Warhol’s mother worked as a store clerk and encouraged her son to become an artist.

A year after his father’s death, Andy Warhol dropped out of school and moved to New York City in hopes of becoming an illustrator. He took a job as an advertising designer for the “Esquire” magazine where he created advertisements for shoes and furs.

The first time Andy Warhol’s art was publicly acknowledged was when he had a single piece selected for inclusion in the “Thirty-fifth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings” at Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. His work was reviewed as “distinguished” and “entertaining.” In 1949, Warhol enrolled in the Carnegie Institute’s art program but left after two years without earning a degree.

Towards the end of his life, Andy Warhol suffered from poor health due to poor nutrition, drug use and excessive alcohol consumption. He became a recluse in his final years and often stayed in bed for weeks at a time.

Although Warhol’s fame as an artist rests primarily on his silkscreen portraits of such iconic figures as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, he was a prolific creator in many media. He made paintings, sculpture, film, video and music. He wrote books and magazine articles and directed movies. His “screen tests” of friends and celebrities were among the first examples of experimental film.

He came up with his own unique way to exhibit art that has become a standard practice for museums: He created series of works on identical canvases, which he then displayed together in grids. The Andy Warhol Museum devotes an entire floor to a series from 1962 called “The Flowers.” Each canvas is an enlarged photograph of a single carnation that Warhol took himself from the flower market on Sixth Avenue in New York City.

Although he might seem to have been obsessed with celebrity, Warhol worked with thousands of different people during his lifetime — singers, actors, authors, playwrights, artists, street people — all the sorts of people one might find at a party or on the street. In fact he painted friends and family members nearly as often as celebrities.

While many people know Warhol’s name because of the Campbell’s Soup Cans or Brillo Boxes,

Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 6, 1928, to Czech immigrant parents. His mother, Julia (née Zavacky), was a factory worker, and his father, Andrej Warhola, was a construction worker. His parents were working-class Lemko emigrants from Mikova, who settled in Johnstown before moving to Pittsburgh. Warhol’s father abandoned the family for 10 years on July 5, 1933 and moved to California; he died there as an alcoholic in 1971.

Warhol had two older brothers—Pavol (Paul), the oldest, was born before the family emigrated; Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol’s son James Warhola became a successful children’s book illustrator. Pavol Warhol died at the age of 66 from lung cancer on December 8, 2009.

Warhol’s father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The house on Beelen Street was populated with neighborhood children: “We kids would go there after school,” he later recalled, “and hang out until it got dark.”

The Warhol children were raised Catholic; Andy attended parochial school