WARHOL, ANDY
1928 Pittsburgh, PA/USA–1987 New York

Title: Goethe.
Date: 1982.
Technique: Colour silkscreen on Lenox museum board.
Depiction Size: 96.5 x 96.5 cm.
Notation: Signed and numbered.
Publisher: Edition Schellmann & Klüser, Munich; Denise René/Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf (publisher).
Number: 94/100.


Bearing the blind stamp of the printer, Rupert Jasen Smith, New York. The reverse side bears the copyright stamp of the artist and the publisher



Provenance:
- - Galerie Vorburg (later Galerie Wünsche), Königswinter

- Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from Vorheriger in 1984)


Literature:
- Feldman, Frayda/Schellmann, Jörg: Andy Warhol – Prints, A catalogue raisonné 1962–1987, Milan 2003 (4th ed.), cat. rais. no. II.270





With Goethe in the Roman Campagna, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein created, at the end of the eighteenth century, one of the most celebrated literary portraits of all time. Nearly two centuries later, Andy Warhol revisited this famous motif and translated it into the visual language of Pop Art.

Warhol discovered the Wanderer on the Obelisk—as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself referred to the painting—more or less by chance as a subject for his work. In 1980, a portrait commission from the publisher Siegfried Unseld, whom he intended to photograph, brought him to Frankfurt. Since the 1970s, the American Pop artist had increasingly accepted commissioned portrait work, often using his own photographs as source material. Warhol visited the Städel Museum with Unseld and is said to have been encouraged by him to create a variation of Tischbein’s celebrated painting.

The “court painter of the 1970s,” as art historian Robert Rosenblum famously described Warhol, accepted the commission, photographed the Goethe painting, and produced his first large-format Goethe canvas the following year. In 1982, the four-part suite of portrait silkscreens entitled Goethe, rendered in different color variations, was released. The series was published in 100 numbered sets, each comprising four screen prints.

Through his characteristic silkscreen technique, serial repetition, and the use of bold, high-contrast colors, Warhol transformed Goethe’s portrait into a modern, graphic work of art. In doing so, he focused particularly on the poet’s striking head, deliberately extracting it from its original landscape context.

The dialogue between the two works compellingly demonstrates how a classical artistic motif can be reinterpreted across centuries. While Tischbein embodies the ideal of the cultivated, timeless poet, Warhol reimagines Goethe as a powerful symbol of modern media and consumer culture—comparable to his portraits of celebrated public figures.

This interplay between classicism and modernity makes the motif especially compelling: it unites art-historical significance with contemporary aesthetics and appeals equally to admirers of traditional painting and enthusiasts of modern art. An exceptional collector’s piece, distinguished by cultural depth and strong visual presence.



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#Andy Warhol #Pop Art #Photographs #USA #Post-War Art #Print #Celebrities #Colour silkscreen #1980s #Prints.







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