Andy Warhol's name is synonymous with Pop Art of the 1960s.  He is credited with combining the photographic verisimilitude of the silkscreen media with everyday, mass produced objects to create new American icons.  A fascination with consumerism led Warhol to appropriate famous images of celebrities and products for his portraits.  Grace Kelly (1984) was published to raise funds for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) has been called the Nude Descending A Staircase (Marcel Duchamp, 1912) of Pop Art.

Warhol was born in Pittsburgh to immigrant Czechoslovakian parents.  He attended Saturday art classes at The Carnegie Museum of Art and later entered The Carnegie Institute of Technology, receiving a degree in 1949.  A successful commercial artist in New York City, Warhol's advertisements for shoes are particularly well known.  He had many one person shows at New York galleries in the early 1960s and became as famous for himself as for his art, achieving a reputation as an art celebrity.