Grace Kelly

Andy Warhol's portrait of Grace Kelly is an homage to golden-age Hollywood glamour. The portrait, based on a still from Kelly's 1951 debut film 'Fourteen Hours', depicts her looking defiantly at the camera, with her face tightly cropped to fill the entire foreground. Warhol has added his characteristic lines to the image, transforming photo into drawing, and overlaid it with block colours that serve to enhance the contours and shadows of Kelly's iconic face.

Fixated on the theme of celebrity tragedy, Warhol completed the edition in 1984, two years after Grace Kelly's death at the age of 52. He produced the portfolio as a fundraising effort for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kelly's birthplace, and just hours from his own hometown of Pittsburgh.

Screenprint in colours, 1984, on Lenox Museum Board, signed in pencil and numbered 140/225 from the edition of 225 (there were also 30 artists proofs), printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, New York, published by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 101.6 x 81.3 cm. (40 x 32 in.)

Feldman and Schellmann II.305