Andy Warhol

Venus in Shell

1986

© 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London

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Not on display

Artist: Andy Warhol 1928–1987
Medium: 4 photographs, gelatin silver print on paper and thread
Dimensions: Object: 700 × 542 mm
frame: 946 × 779 × 26 mm
Collection: ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
Acquisition: ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Reference: AR00294

Online caption

Following the gift of a camera in 1976, Warhol began to photographically document every aspect of his life from the people he met to graffiti on the streets. He also took more composed images such as this one. In 1986 he developed some of these images into what became known as his stitched photographs. Created by sewing several identical images together, these works are indebted to his early screenprints in their use of repetition and grid formation. The repeated image in this work of the nude woman standing in a shell is a modern version of the early Renaissance painting ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Sandro Botticelli.