Gagosian / Rizzoli Andy Warhol: Liz

Frequently hailed as the greatest movie star of all time, Elizabeth Taylor was a friend of Warhol’s in the 1970s and 1980s. The personification of charisma whose highly public life charged with drama, tragedy, and romance, this iconic muse was a perfect vehicle for Warhol’s vivid silkscreen portraiture derived from press clippings, publicity shots, and film stills. Warhol made over fifty portraits of her in all her incarnations-- from the ethereally beautiful child-actress (National Velvet, 1963) to the commanding, voluptuous screen goddess (Blue Liz as Cleopatra, 1962). Brought together for the first time, each portrait captures and amplifies the intensity, the extravagance, the carnality, and the resilience that were the unique hallmarks of Elizabeth Taylor’s notorious and beloved character. Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is widely regarded as a defining figure not only of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s but of an entire cultural era. He worked prodigiously across a vast range of media, including painting, photography, print-making, drawing, sculpture, film (sixty experimental films between 1963 and 1968), television ("Andy Warhol's TV," 1982 and "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes," 1986), publishing (Interview magazine and various books), happenings, and performances.