Warhol was a commercial illustrator before embarking on painting. Warhol produced a wide campbells consomme beef of art works depicting Campbell’s Soup cans during three distinct phases of his career, and he produced other works using a variety of images from the world of commerce and mass media. Today, the Campbell’s Soup cans theme is generally used in reference to the original set of paintings as well as the later Warhol drawings and paintings depicting Campbell’s Soup cans.
Warhol arrived in New York City in 1949, directly from the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1960, Warhol began producing his first canvases, which he based on comic strip subjects. In late 1961, he learned the process of silkscreening from Floriano Vecchi, who had run the Tiber Press since 1953. Stencils such as this are the basis for silkscreening. Although Warhol had produced silkscreens of comic strips and of other pop art subjects, he supposedly relegated himself to soup cans as a subject at the time to avoid competing with the more finished style of comics by Roy Lichtenstein.
Irving Blum was the first dealer to show Warhol’s soup can paintings. Black font coloring is visible in Clam Chowder and Beef canvases from Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Golden banners make the Cheddar Cheese canvas from Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962 unique. Campbell’s Soup can portraits, each representing a particular variety of the Campbell’s Soup flavors available at the time. A postcard dated June 26, 1962 sent by from Irving Blum states ” 32 ptgs arrived safely and look beautiful. The exhibition opened on July 9, 1962, with Warhol absent.
The thirty-two single soup can canvases were placed in a single line, much like products on shelves, each displayed on narrow individual ledges. The contemporary impact was uneventful, but the historical impact is considered today to have been a watershed. The Ferus show closed on August 4, 1962, the day before Marilyn Monroe’s death. Warhol went on to purchase a Monroe publicity still from the film Niagara, which he later cropped and used to create one of his most well-known works: his painting of Marilyn. Example of the variations that Irving Blum saw when determining to introduce him by exhibit. Several anecdotal stories supposedly explain why Warhol chose Campbell’s Soup cans as the focal point of his pop art. One reason is that he needed a new subject after he abandoned comic strips, a move taken in part due to his respect for the refined work of Roy Lichtenstein.