Andy Warhol was the most renowned Pop artist in the 1960s and, more generally, one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. His boundless and apparently effortless creativity expressed itself in many forms. He was a commercial designer, painter, print-maker, filmmaker, and publisher.

Although Warhol was intentionally obscure about his background, he was born Andrew Warhola, the son of a Czech Roman Catholic emigrant miner, in remote Forest City, Pennsylvania. After his father's early death, Warhol enrolled in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of Technology as an art student in 1946. At this time he worked as a window decorator in a Pittsburgh department store. By 1950 he had shortened his name to Andy Warhol, and had moved to New York where his reputation as a designer quickly blossomed. Besides doing graphic work for magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, he won awards for his...