Focus Report - Andy Warhol

Between 1972 and 1973, Warhol created 199 portraits of Mao on canvas. As the dimensions

decreased, the series grew more numerous—a principle Warhol had already employed in his earlier

works:

I N WA R H O L’S P R O D U C T I O N

The Mao

Series

T H E E A R LY M AO S (1 9 7 2)

This group of 11 canvases, f ive of which are in public collections, marks the very f irst series

of Mao portraits, created in the spring of 1972. Here, the artist’s hand is surprisingly

evident, marking a departure from the more mechanised approach seen in his earlier

portraits of Liz or Marilyn. Warhol made the painterly additions after the silkscreen

impression, resulting in an unprecedented deviation in his process—one that is distinctive

of this period and would not be repeated in his later work.

T H E G I A N T M AO S (1 9 7 2)

At the close of 1972, Warhol produced four giant-sized Mao portraits, each around 450

cm tall, making them the largest single-image works of his career. Their monumentality

refers to the gigantic portrait of the Chairman that dominates Beijing’s Tiananmen

Square. Today, three of these commanding canvases reside in museum collections at the

Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Hamburger Bahnhof

in Berlin.

T H E L A R G E M AO S (1 9 7 3)

Executed in 1973, this series is about half the size of the Early Maos, establishing a pattern

that Warhol would maintain in the two subsequent series. Comprising 28 paintings, most

are held in private collections, with six in institutional holdings—including four at the Andy

Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

T H E M E D I U M M AO S 1 9 7 3

Approximately half the size of the previous series this one is slightly more numerous

consisting of 34 paintings As in both the large and smallsized series these works

feature a broader range of colour schemes and a more gestural application of paint

T H E S M A L L M AO S 1 9 7 3

This series comprising 122 paintings is the most painterly and experimental among the

Maos Here the hand of the artist is at its most liberated echoing the spirit of Abstract

Expressionism that took hold in New York after the Second World War with artists like

Jackson Pollock In these works Warhol employed sweeping brushstrokes and layered

paint more thickly introducing a palette of more intricate colours than ever before