A Mayfair gallery is celebrating the life and work of pop art pioneer Andy Warhol with a free exhibition.
Halcyon Gallery's Beyond The Brand opens today (January 18) showing some of the American icon's best known pieces, alongside his rarely-seen Ads paintings.
The set of 10 canvases and prints will be on display in the UK for the first time alongside iconic depictions of Queen Elizabeth II, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali Chairman Mao, and Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans.
Displayed across the gallery's two sites at 29 and 148 Bond Street, the show looks at how Warhol explored the intersection between art and commerce like no other artist.
This was most clearly expressed in the Ads series, which was created as a portfolio of silkscreen prints and ten paintings on canvas, reimagining famous adverts for the likes of Apple computers, Volkswagen cars and Chanel No. 5 with vibrant colours.
Kate Brown, Halcyon Gallery’s creative director and curator of the exhibition, said: "This exhibition is a comprehensive overview of Warhol’s creative life, from his earliest artworks and illustrations to the last works he ever produced. Visitors to the gallery will be given an overarching view of his entire career, including the chance to see many of his iconic portfolios in their entirety.
"Warhol’s seismic contribution to the story of art is that he tied his work to a collective consciousness more closely than any other artist had before. His art is a pure reflection of popular culture in his lifetime and the spirit of western capitalism."
In an essay accompanying the exhibition, art historian and curator Joachim Pissarro writes: ‘Ads is a masterful culmination of Warhol’s career-long interest in the blurred lines between commercialism and fine art.
"These ads radiate themes such as cosmopolitanism, technology, movie stardom, political power, elegance and luxury in a visual vocabulary that was at stark odds with the deceptively homespun, quaint but enchanting output of Warhol’s own wildly successful career as a commercial illustrator thirty years prior."
Also on show will be Warhol's Endangered Species collection and a rarely seen portrait of Pelé which was presented to the football legend by Warhol himself.
Monumental late works including a painting of Mount Vesuvius and a canvas depicting a watch by Swiss brand Rado, produced in the final months of Warhol’s life, are also on show alongside his Campbell’s Soup Cans, which are accompanied by ephemera illustrating the extraordinary impact the artist’s best-known motif has had on culture.
An immersive room at 148 New Bond Street features the Andy Mouse portfolio by Keith Haring portraying Warhol as Mickey Mouse, swimming in dollar bills and dancing in a nightclub.
The space, which takes inspiration from Haring's 80s 'Pop Shop' which converged graffiti and art, are a testament to Warhol's influence on artists like Haring and Jean Michel-Basquiat - as well as the changing face of the New York art scene.
Andy Warhol Beyond The Brand is at Halcyon Gallery at 29 and 148 New Bond Street, Mayfair, London.
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