Andy Warhol's continuing quest for ideal beauty, visible in a body of work presented here together for the first time.

Andy Warhol is undoubtedly one of the best known and most debated artists of the twentieth century. Although his depictions of consumer products and celebrities made him a recognisable figure in every household, there is a common thread running through his entire career, beginning as early as the late 1940s and extending until his untimely death in 1987. Throughout the 1980s, Warhol constantly sought to visualise an ideal of beauty, masculine beauty, finding forms and creating enduring images of what he desired. He visualised and thus eternalised this continuous search for ideal beauty.

From his early drawings with lines and dashed lines, to his camera tests and experiments with moving image in the 1960s, the torsos paintings in the 1970s and his collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, there is a constant quest to express an ideal of male beauty. During his lifetime, these works were considered inappropriate, immoral, deviant or even pornographic, and therefore illegal. Many of these pieces never received the public exposure and recognition they deserved. For the first time, the Neue Nationalgalerie presents a major exhibition focusing on this thematic and central aspect throughout the various production phases and stages of Warhol's career. This publication offers an insight into a Warhol who, during his lifetime, never really came out of the wardrobe.

Warhol died in 1987 at the age of only 58. He left behind an incredibly complex and influential body of work, which during his lifetime never experienced the open acceptance with which we can look at these specific bodies of work today.

Publisher: Prestel Art