The Contemporary Art Series continues at the Handwerker Gallery with Endangered Species, a set of 10 silk screens by Andy Warhol.
All events are free and open to the public.
Instead of garish images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, they depict a giant panda, a bighorn sheep, a Siberian tiger, a Pine Barrens tree frog, and six other animals that were threatened with extinction when Warhol produced these works. The prints are distinguished by bright, gaudy colors, yet somehow the animals seem to be expressing human emotions, as if they are aware of their fate. A native of Pittsburgh, Warhol moved to New York in 1949 after receiving a design degree from what was then the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He began his career as a commercial designer, but in the late 1950s he started to paint, producing his trademark images of Coke bottles, dollar bills, Brillo boxes, and celebrities. With its ability to repeat images endlessly, the silk-screen technique reflected his view of American culture as empty, and Warhol s work placed him in the forefront of the emerging pop art movement in the United States.