Warhol From The Sonnabend Collection

Includes essays: Warhol, the Exorcist by John Richardson; Ileana & Andy: a study in counterpoint by Brenda Richardson.

Taking one of Andy Warhol's famous Campbell soup can paintings as its starting point, From Pop to Now presents a definitive survey of works collected by international gallery owners Ileana and Michael Sonnabend over the last four decades. For more than half a century, the Sonnabends have been a seminal force in the contemporary art world, often showing bold new work considered impossible to sell or too difficult for the times. In Paris from 1962 to 1973 and in New York from 1970 to the present, the Sonnabend galleries' shows have showcased a virtual who's who of contemporary art, spanning the full gamut of artistic exploration, from Pop Art to Minimalism and Conceptualism, from painting and sculpture to video and photography. During the height of the Pop movement, Ileana was dubbed the Mom of Pop Art, and the impact made by her artists at the time -- among them Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist -- is now as legendary as Sonnabend's passion for collecting contemporary art. Committed to exposing audiences in Europe and the United States to the most exciting contemporary work on both continents, the Sonnabends brought to New York the works of Italian Arte Povera artists -- Mario Merz, Gilberto Zorio, Jannis Kounellis, and Pier Calzolari -- and other Europeans, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Christian Boltanski, and Anselm Kieffer. More than a collection, From Pop to Now looks at a pivotal time in contemporary art history, bringing together not only the names that have made history but also the seminal artworks that have defined a generation.

During a career spanning half a century, Ileana Sonnabend (1914-2007) helped shape the course of postwar art in Europe and America. Both a gallerist and a noted collector, Sonnabend championed some of the most significant art movements of her time. Artists as varied as Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Mel Bochner, Jeff Koons, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol worked with Sonnabend, whose support for difficult avant-garde work was legendary. Among the many important works that Sonnabend owned is Rauschenberg's Combine painting Canyon (1959), which the Sonnabend family generously donated to The Museum of Modern Art in 2012. In celebration of this extraordinary gift, Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New accompanies an exhibition exploring her legendary eye through approximately 30 works presented in her eponymous galleries in Paris and New York from the early 1960s through the late 1980s. A biographical essay by Leslie Camhi, artists' recollections and individual entries on the selected works provide further reflection on Sonnabend's taste and lasting influence.

"Through his art, ideas, and style, Andy Warhol made an indelible mark on the history of modern art and on popular culture. This book features ten paintings by Warhol selected from The Museum of Modern Art's substantial collection of his work. His famous Gold Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's Soup Cans are here, along with other equally groundbreaking and iconic silkscreen paintings - from his early work of 1961 to The Last Supper, a painting in progress at the time of his death, in 1987. An essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art and in Warhol's own life."--BOOK JACKET.