Andy Warhol: The LIFE Years 1949-1959

In recent years, an extensive collection of drawings was discovered in Andy Warhol’s estate. Dating from the 1950s, the artist’s early years in New York, the drawings took as their inspiration magazine photographs and illustrations—many from LIFE magazine—and provide further insight into Warhol’s unique working method.

Andy Warhol: The “LIFE” Years 1949–1959 publishes a selection of these newly discovered drawings alongside the original photographs and illustrations. Drawing was an important part of Warhol’s early practice, and he was particularly inspired by the rich visual language found in LIFE and its contemporaries. Many of his drawings were copied with his trademark “blotted line” technique, a basic method of printmaking in which Warhol traced projected photographic images onto paper and then blotting the inked figures to create variations on a theme.

Presenting more than one hundred of the finest of these drawings, including many that have never before been published, the book also offers an informative and accessible discussion of Warhol’s working method and the cultural setting in which he created the drawings.