MAO

1972
10 signed and numbered serigraph screen prints on archival acid free paper

Style/Movement: Pop Art

Opera Gallery proudly exhibits Andy Warhol’s Mao, in its complete portfolio of 10 daringly provocative and irreverent signed and numbered screen prints.  In the 1970’s Warhol painted, Mao, one of the world’s most powerful propaganda images and re-shaped the Chairman’s invincible portrait. Using bright paints, eye shadow and an almost Mona Lisa smile to Mao’s lips, the artist feminized the dictator and made him look like a foppish, middle-aged drag queen.

Warhol had an intuitive grasp of the similarities between contemporary painting and the visual strategies of advertising. Using this knowledge, he transformed an icon that symbolized both power and suffering for millions of people, into an optically charged work of art. The artist explored this same technique using images of money, Liz Taylor, Coca-Cola and  Marilyn Monroe.

The Mao series was originally commissioned by Bruno Bischofberger, a Zurich-based art dealer and Warhol collector and was exhibited for the first time in Basel, Switzerland.  Now, the 10 images with their incredible variations, shocking color combinations and brilliant use of repetition, can be seen at Opera Gallery Miami.