Andy Warhol

(1928 - 1987)

With a degree in pictorial design, Andy Warhol moved to New York City in 1949 and by the late 1950s was earning $100,000 a year for his commercial illustrations. “I want to be a machine,” he declared in 1962, the same year he exhibited 200 Campbell’s Soup Cans and began making art in the Factory, a working space that became a social hub for artists, musicians, and drug addicts. “Now and then someone would accuse me of being evil,” the artist wrote, “of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film and tape-record them. But I don’t think of myself as evil—just realistic.” Warhol’s silkscreen print Eight Elvises sold for $100 million in 2008.