Why Did Andy Warhol Paint Soup Cans? 7 Facts About the Pop Art Icon

Discover the stories behind Warhol’s revolutionary works and more with this timeline of interesting events from his life, art, and death

Andy Warhol’s paintings, prints, and multimedia projects remain some of the best known art in the world, almost 50 years after his passing. Known for their bold, minimal colors and themes of consumerism and celebrity, his works epitomized New York in the 1960s. But how well do you know the life of this legendary artist?

To celebrate the anniversary of his birth (August 6, 1928), here we explore a timeline from Warhol’s early life through to his most iconic works—even posthumous ones. Along the way, discover little-known facts such as why he painted soup cans, and which of his experimental films was an astonishing eight hours long!

1. Andy Warhol’s real name was Andrew Warhola Jr.

He was named after his father, Ondrej, and was born on August 6, 1928 in Pennsylvania, after his parents moved to the US from Austria-Hungary (in an area of modern-day Slovakia). In the third grade he was bedridden due to illness, and learned to draw from his mother. He would go on to study commercial art (for advertising) at college.

2. Warhol had Campbell’s Soup for lunch for 20 years

He famously claimed that he “drank” the popular soup for lunch every day for two decades. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that his paintings of soup cans would be the catalyst for his rise to stardom in the art world.

In 1962, his first major exhibition on the West Coast featured 32 paintings of the different Campbell's Soup flavors, lined up on a shelf as if they were in a supermarket.

The Campbell Soup cans were actually hand painted, but made to look mass-produced. It was later in 1962 that he began exhibiting silkscreen prints as a major focus.

3. He managed a rock band

In 1966 he became the manager for then-unknown rock band The Velvet Underground— he integrated their work into multimedia shows with other artists. Though they parted ways with Warhol after their first album due to artistic differences, after the artist's death, lead singer Lou Reed and instrumentalist John McCale recorded a concept album as a tribute to him.

4. Warhol was also a prolific filmmaker

In the 1960s, Warhol produced 60 films, and over his lifetime was involved in more than 150. These were largely experimental, including titles such as Empire, which is an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building, and Eat, in which a man eats a mushroom for 45 minutes.

5. He founded an iconic studio for elite parties, called The Factory

Warhol’s studio was named The Factory: but it wasn’t always in the same place. Over a span of 20 years, the studio moved to four different locations around New York City, each playing host to infamous parties alongside the ongoing film-making and art production there. Warhol was notorious for “discovering” cultural influences in art, music, cinema, and more, and called these people “superstars”.

6. Though he didn’t invent Pop Art, he revolutionized it

As we explored in our Pop Art history video, artist Richard Hamilton first described what would become known as Pop Art in 1957. This artistic style sought to bring popular culture and “low-brow” themes back into the art world, avoiding elitism and abstraction.

Warhol was the one who sent this style into the stratosphere due to his focus on repetition. Mass production was celebrated and criticized in his images of both objects and people, such as the iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.

7. He was shot in 1968— but this isn’t how Warhol died

In 1968 a writer named Valerie Solanas pitched a film to Warhol, and he cast her in another film he was working on. Later, she visited The Factory and demanded her script back, but learned it had been misplaced. She then attempted to assassinate Warhol, and also shot art critic Mario Amaya. She was a separatist radical feminist who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at her trial, and believed that Warhol and others were controlling her life.

Warhol was profoundly impacted both mentally and physically, fearing that she would attempt to kill him again. However, he lived another 20 years, sadly passing away in 1987 after suffering an irregular heartbeat following an operation.

8. Later in life, he began to keep an audio diary

Warhol had to record his spendings for the IRS as he was having some financial issues, but this led to a minutely-detailed account of his life which he recorded daily in phone calls. In total, 3,400 audiotapes were produced, leading up until a few days before his death.

These recordings were published as The Warhol Diaries shortly after he died, and in 2022 artificial intelligence was used to recreate his voice as part of a documentary on this time of his life.

Explore the story and techniques of Pop Art with these resources

1. Discover five interesting facts about the screen-printing technique used by Warhol.

2. Learn how to create vibrant Pop Art portraits with this course by M.Tony Peralta.

3. Decorate clothing with this introduction to screen-printing course by YUK FUN.

4. Learn how AI was used to recreate Warhol’s voice for a Netflix documentary.

Cover image credit: "Campbell's Soup Cans" by Andy Warhol (1962), MOMA. Photograph: Rocor, via Flickr.