Fish

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)

Fish

signed and inscribed (upper right)

screenprint on silk scarf

35 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches (90.2 x 90.2 cm)

framed: 41 x 41 inches (104.1 x 104.1 cm)

Executed in 1983. From an edition of an unknown size.

PROVENANCE:

Christie's, New York, 20 April 2023, lot 288

Private collection, California

LITERATURE:

Feldman & Schellmann IIA.40

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 Fish transforms a simple, natural subject into a bold graphic image through color, repetition, and the silkscreen process. Stripped of narrative or environmental context, the fish becomes an emblem of surface and form, aligned with Warhol’s broader interest in isolating familiar motifs and rendering them iconic. The work reflects his ability to bridge nature and Pop aesthetics, treating organic imagery with the same visual economy applied to consumer goods and celebrities.