Andy Warhol is one of the most recognized American Pop artists. After studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949, he moved to New York and began working as a commercial artist and illustrator for magazines and newspapers. He worked for Glamour magazine for about a year. He soon started working as an independent artist concentrating on painting derived from comic strips and advertisements. His most interesting and successful works were his silk-screen printing pieces.
Silk-screen printing, also known as serigraphy, is a modern colour printing process based on stenciling. This process began in the twentieth century and has widely been used in textile printing. In the 1930s it was developed in the United States as an artists medium. This technique begins when a screen of fine mesh is stretched on a wooden frame. A stencil is then secured to the screen. Color is then forced through the uncovered areas of the screen onto the paper underneath by running a squeegee over the stencil and screen. Andy Warhol is probably the most well known artist that used this technique.
Silk-screen printing makes it nearly impossible for two images to be alike. The audience learns to expect the unexpected in Warhol's work. Warhol's Twenty Marilyns is an excellent example of the silk-screen printing technique. None of the images of Monroe are alike. They are, however, all from the same original stencil. Warhol used this technique for two main reasons. Reason one being that he had an interest in mechanical reproduction. The second reason is that it was a convenient way to mass-produce an image. Nearly all of his works relate one way or another to the commercially mass-produced machine products. He liked the fact that none of the Marilyns were exactly alike. Twenty Marilyns is a very flat, symmetrical, symbolic piece. The piece is larger-than-life which helps to convey the idea behind it.
