“The Queen” by Andy Warhol scheduled to auction

The painting of the renowned American artist Andy Warhol, mentor of pop art, will be auctioned by Bonhams, one of the largest auctioneers in the world in the category art and antiques. It bears the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and is part of the Reigning Queens series, which also includes portraits of the queens of Denmark, the Netherlands and Swaziland.

Scheduled to be auctioned on July 11 for up to U.S. $ 93.300, the painting was one of the last painted by the artist before his sudden death in 1987 in New York, USA.

The pop art of Andy Warhol is known from the use of icons in the world of celebrities and advertising art. The artistic movement is designed in a context of industrialization of the cities, reproducibility and consumerism. Andy Warhol worked on top of industrial civilization, where the relentless repetition of the icons of pop culture caused a pasteurization and trivialization of itself.

This is the case of 'The Queen "(1987) in which the artist gave use to the propagated image to exhaustion and transformed it – from photography and using vibrant colours – in another reproduction.

By Luís Silva