Cow

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)

Cow

stamped with the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts inkstamps and numbered '0375 AWF.429' (on the reverse)

screenprint on wallpaper

45 1/2 x 29 3/4 inches (115.6 x 75.6 cm)

Executed in 1971. This work is from an edition of an unknown size.

Published by Factory Additions, New York.

PROVENANCE:

Estate of Andy Warhol

Private collection, California

LITERATURE:

Feldman & Schellmann II.11A

NOTES:

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) emerged as a pioneering figure at the forefront of the 1960s Pop Art movement. His vivid silkscreens of Campbell’s Soup Cans, Marilyn Monroe, and other commercial icons blurred the lines between fine art, mass production and advertising. Working across film, photography, painting and printmaking, Warhol upended traditional notions of authorship and elevated the artist to celebrity status. His Factory studio became an incubator for artistic innovation, and his incisive critique of consumerism and fame continues to shape contemporary art and popular culture today.

Warhol’s Cow is among his most playful and radical departures, transforming a humble farm animal into a monumental Pop icon. Originally conceived as wallpaper, the image exemplifies Warhol’s interest in repetition, scale, and the collapse of boundaries between fine art, decoration, and commercial design. By rendering the cow in unnatural, high-key color, Warhol elevates the ordinary into the iconic, underscoring his belief that any repetitively produced image can achieve cultural prominence.