Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh U.S.A. on 6th August 1928. His formative years were spent in the time of the great depression of the 1930s and, perhaps, it was this that in later years led to his obsessive need for glamour and entertainment.

Warhol was the youngest son of Carpatho-Russian parents (now part of Slovakia) who had immigrated to Pittsburgh before Andy's birth in 1928. He grew up within a strong Catholic society, his mother maintaining a constant influence throughout his life, even sharing his home in New York until her death.

The young Warhol enrolled in a painting and design course at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and, after graduation in 1949, he moved permanently to New York. Much of Andy's work has always been based in portraiture, or rather, taking the traditions of artists trying to represent a subject and twisting it to his own ends. Warhol used a variety of mediums to express this idea of identity, glamour, youth, death and disaster. His self-portraits show most clearly perhaps these influences, his own image becoming a source of inspiration throughout his life.

Warhol also acted as a catalyst in changing public attitudes, and indeed attitudes within the art world itself, with reference to the very nature of 'art'. During the 1950s Andy was working as a highly celebrated graphic designer producing advertisements and fashion illustrations. Over the next forty years he embraced and challenged the art world by using mass production techniques employed in the world of graphic artists, thus moving his identity from the commercial art world to making his own rules and setting a new agenda for others to follow in style and context.

Warhol succeeded in establishing artists as important figures within American culture and, whilst doing so, he also succeeded in merging the lines between artist and celebrity. The strength of his work comes, ultimately, from his fascination with and concentration on the fundamental concerns of being human, the concerns of beauty, youth, fame and the presence of images as icons. By employing the techniques of mass production used in the commercial world, Warhol was able to challenge preconceived ideas regarding the very nature of painting, the nature of creating art and the role of practising artists. During his career Andy transformed the world of contemporary art and his influence continues to be felt today.