Andy Warhol

Endangered Species

Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board.
1983
38″ x 38″
Edition of 150, 30 AP, 5 PP, 5 EP, 3 HC, 10 numbered in Roman numerals, 1 BAT, 30 TP, signed and numbered in pencil lower right.
Portfolio of ten screenprints.
Printer: Rupert Jasen Smith, New York
Publisher: Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc., New York

Andy Warhol – Edition Prints – Endangered Species

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Andy Warhol Endangered Species is a range of artworks created by artist Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol created a series of ten color screenprints that portrayed endangered animals from around the world: Siberian tiger, San Francisco silverspot, orangutan, Grevy’s zebra, black rhinoceros, bighorn ram, African elephant, pine barrens tree frog, giant panda and bald eagle. Using brilliant colors – characteristic of his signature style – and poignant expressions suggestive of the animal’s fate, Warhol creates a dynamic tension between art and reality.

The Endangered Species portfolio was commissioned by Ronald and Frayda Feldman, long-time political and environmental activists who support innovative art projects and installations through their art gallery, Ronald Feldman Fine Art, New York. According to the Feldman’s, the idea for the portfolio emerged after conversations with Warhol about ecological issues that included a discussion about beach erosion. Warhol was always interested in animals and when Ronald Feldman proposed the idea, the artist embraced it. Today, the loss of habitat and biodiversity are still hot topics as the impact of development reaches critical thresholds.

When Andy Warhol first burst onto the artistic stage in the 1960s’, he did so by incorporating images that were firmly embedded in the American psyche. His bright and colorful paintings and serigraphs presented images that were commonplace — a soup can or coke bottle — but were transformed by his technique into artistic icons of popular culture. Warhol was most interested in image and not reality, although one could say that by casting these mass produced commercial images in his own unique style, Warhol was making a comment on the reality of living in a world that was dominated by images from the advertising and entertainment industries. Warhol’s prints are in essence images of images. They are at least once removed, and often several times removed, from reality. His famous prints of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, not to mention countless other celebrities, are based on photographs. As in the case with Marilyn Monroe, many of those photographs are of his subjects posing as a character, not as themselves, a subtle reminder that once someone achieves a certain celebrity status, they become further and further removed from their real selves. How many layers must one remove to finally see the real person depicted in a Warhol print?