WARHOL, ANDY
1928 Pittsburgh, PA/USA–1987 New York

Title: Beethoven.
Date: 1987.
Technique: Colour silkscreen on Lenox museum board.
Depiction Size: 102 x 102 cm.
Notation: Numbered.
Publisher: Hermann Wünsche, Bonn/New York (publisher).
Number: 30/60.
Frame: In the original frame from Galerie Wünsche.


Bearing the blind stamp of the printer, Rupert Jasen Smith, New York. The verso bears the copyright stamp of the artist and the publisher



Provenance:
- - Galerie Wuensche, Bonn

- Private Collection Northrine-Westphalia (acquired 1987 from the before mentioned)


Literature:
- Feldman, Frayda/Schellmann, Jörg: Andy Warhol Prints – A catalogue raisonné 1962–1987,

Milan 2003 (4th edition), cat. rais. no. II.393



- One of the artist’s outstanding portraits, created shortly before his death

- The portrait was commissioned by Hermann Wünsche to mark the 2000th anniversary of Bonn, then the federal capital

- In 2026, the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn will dedicate an exhibition to the theme under the title

“Warhol & Music”





Andy Warhol’s portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven demonstrates the artist’s ability to manipulate and appropriate images in order to create visual icons. For this series, Warhol drew upon an already celebrated portrait of the composer by Joseph Karl Stieler from 1820, which captures Beethoven’s personality like no other. In his interpretation, Warhol skillfully emphasizes the composer’s impatient expression, leonine mane of hair, and hands through the use of color, while the remainder of the body more or less merges into the background.



Warhol, however, takes Stieler’s visual identification of the composer one step further, extending beyond mere facial recognition. He is not content simply to employ Beethoven’s tools of the trade—the manuscript and quill—to allude to the composer’s genius, but instead allows the music itself to flow directly across the portrait. In Stieler’s painting, Beethoven is shown holding the score of his late Missa solemnis, one of his greatest compositions. Warhol, however, chose the score of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor—better known as the Moonlight Sonata—for his portrait.



By employing the more widely recognized Moonlight Sonata, Warhol once again demonstrates that his intention was not to create a faithful likeness, but rather a cliché of reality—an image that transforms the individual into legend.



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#Andy Warhol #Pop Art #Photographs #USA #Post-War Art #Print #Celebrities #Colour silkscreen #1980s #Prints.







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