Brought to light February 2010 – February 2011

Andy Warhol was famous for creating memorable images of the celebrities and historical figures of his generation, including Marilyn Monroe, Sigmund Freud and Elvis Presley. The subject of this screenprint, Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976), was the revolutionary founder of Communist China and controlled almost a billion people for over twentyfive years. Using the impersonal technique of screenprinting to create a mask of vivid colours, Warhol has portrayed Mao not as a political leader, but as a product of the cult of personality – instantly recognisable and packaged for dispersal to a mass audience.

Mao Tse Tung (1893-1976) was the revolutionary founder of Communist China and, as leader, controlled almost a billion people for over 25 years. Andy Warhol has portrayed him as a product of mass culture, instantly recognisable and packaged for dispersal to a wide audience. The impersonal screenprinting technique, with its mask of vivid colours, conveys the universal power of a recognisable image, but reveals almost nothing about Mao’s character or the political history he symbolises. Warhol was born to immigrant Czechoslovakian parents in Pittsburgh in the United States. He studied at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and was a successful commercial illustrator in New York in the 1950s. Warhol began exhibiting his paintings with silk-screened Pop Art imagery in 1962 and in 1963 he began making films. Warhol became famous for creating memorable images of celebrities and historical figures of his generation, including Marilyn Monroe, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Elvis Presley. (Opening Gallery hang 2003)