Milan – After ten years of absence, Andy Warhol returns to Milan with a major exhibition curated by Achille Bonito Oliva in collaboration with Edoardo Falcioni, one of the leading experts of the artist in Italy. From next 22 October until 26 March 2023, the industrial archeology spaces of the Steam Factory they will be the set of a story that embraces the entire parable of the Pop Art guru. The multiform talents of an all-round creative are highlighted: from visual arts to fashion, from music to entrepreneurial projects.

300 works are coming for Andy Warhol. Advertising in the form: original paintings, unique pieces, serigraphs that have made an era, drawings, photographs and authentic cult objects such as the covers of the discs designed and autographed by the artist, as well as the faithful reconstruction of the first Factory and videos to watch with 3D glasses. “Warhol is the Raphael of the American mass society that gives surface to every depth of the image making it immediately usable, ready for consumption like any product that crowds our daily life “, explains Bonito Oliva:” Thus the advertising of the form creates the epiphany, that is the appearance, of the image “.

Andy Warhol, Portraits of Marilyn Monroe (© Andy Warhol)

At the Fabbrica del Vapore the journey into the Pop Art revolution begins in the 1950s, when ours has already made a name for himself as a designer, and then looks with new eyes on the following decade, the most famous and prolific period, when art becomes an innovative form of social survey. In this section we will find icons such as the Campbell’s soupfamous portraits such as those of Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, but also pieces linked to collective dramas such as the death of President Kennedy, represented in Jacqueline’s marked face at her husband’s funeral.

In the seventies Warhol is now officially “the society artist” and the curators explore with interest the ambivalences of his gaze on the world. The finale of the exhibition is instead dedicated to the relationship with the young generation of creatives of the Big Apple in the Eighties, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haringfor which Warhol will be a sort of spiritual father while not giving up new experiments and visionary reinventions of the past, with a special eye on the link with the sacred which, beyond appearances, pervades the artist’s entire life.

Read also:
• Of symbols and signs. Albertina Modern presents Basquiat
• Keith Haring in 100 works to be discovered in Monza