Andy Warhol: Toy Paintings - Viewing Room

ANDY WARHOL: TOY PAINTINGS

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In 1983, Andy Warhol painted the Toy Paintings, unique silkscreen and hand-painted compositions of the artist’s favorite toys and their packaging from around the world.

Warhol collected tin and wind-up toys from around the world. His collection featured toys from Japan, Hungary, China, Germany, Russia, Korea and the US. These paintings replicate the packaging of the now-rare collectible vintage toys, which Gmurzynska has sourced from around the world. Warhol’s message is about universal play and commerce in the late Cold-War period.

This series has been noted for showing Warhol’s painting skills: manipulating color and surface pattern to achieve a wide range of expressive effects. The canvases show considerable hand-drawn lettering, outlining, off-register printing, and subtle gradations of color, distinguishing their importance among Warhol’s painted works. Writing for Artforum in 1986, Lisa Liebmann wrote, “the range of colors in these works amounted to a virtuoso display of how lavishly versatile, how suggestive, Warhol’s now-standard formalities can be.” Each composition is rendered in a unique three-color combination, composed as if the work should be viewed through 3D glasses.