9 things you never knew about Pennsylvania native Andy Warhol
Learn about your favorite Pittsburgh-born pop artist with these 9 facts about Andy Warhol.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Andy Warhol is one of the city’s most famous sons. Though Warhol left the city to begin his art career in New York, Pittsburgh is home to a massive Warhol museum, as well as monuments to the artist, such as the Andy Warhol Bridge. Warhol himself was an enigma, both intensely private and obsessed with his image, committed to his art, and also publicly irreverent about it. We’ve gathered nine facts about Andy Warhol that you may not already know—though as Warhol told a journalist in 1967, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”
1. Though he spent most of his adult life in New York, he still has family in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh in 1928. His parents were Rusyn immigrants who had moved to Pittsburgh from what is now Slovakia. Warhol dropped the “a” from his name early in his artistic career and then moved to New York, but the rest of his family remained Pittsburgh Warholas. Warhol’s brother, John Warhola, managed the artist’s estate after his death and continued to do so until his own death in 2010. John Warhola’s son and Andy Warhol’s nephew, Donald Warhola, is the vice president and a board member of the Andy Warhol Foundation. He works as the Warhola family historian at the Andy Warhol Museum as well as a licensed social worker.
2. He started making art during a childhood illness that affected him for the rest of his life.
When Warhol was 8 years old, he developed complications from rheumatic fever—a condition then not uncommon in poor neighborhoods—caused by improperly treated scarlet fever. The illness left him bedridden for months, caused involuntary tremors, and made his skin blotchy. While he was healing, his mother, Julia, helped him get into art, providing him with drawing materials and art supplies. But even after his recovery, other children bullied him for his appearance, and Warhol later became obsessed with his health and his image. After he was shot in 1968, his fear of hospitals and doctors became even more pronounced. Unfortunately, his fears likely helped lead to his early death in 1987 at the age of 58, as he delayed treatment for gallbladder issues for years.
3. He was a devout Catholic.
Though committed to the avant-garde, Warhol was a practicing Byzantine Catholic, attending church every Sunday and sometimes multiple times each week. He grew up attending St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh with his family. In New York, he went to the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, a Roman Catholic parish in Manhattan. Warhol often incorporated religious imagery into his art. However, as Warhol was openly gay, his faith was also a source of tension in his life.
4. He was a commercial artist first—or perhaps always.
Warhol’s artistic career began in the 1950s with commercial illustrations for magazines, record labels, and fashion brands. He drew a lot of women’s shoes in particular, and his first piece in a museum was an image of a high-heeled shoe in a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1956. Warhol actually offered to donate the piece (or one similar to it) to the museum, but they rejected it—a decision the museum staff still probably regrets. Warhol’s work in advertising influenced the pop art he soon became known for, as he transformed everyday objects like Campbell’s soup cans into fine art. Up until the year of his death, Warhol continued to proclaim, “I’m still a commercial artist. I was always a commercial artist.”
5. He collected mundane objects and had more than 600 boxes of them at the time of his death.
Andy Warhol collected all sorts of everyday items—today, he might have been considered prone to hoarding. When he died, 610 boxes of memorabilia—his “Time Capsules”—were taken from his home. They included everyday clutter like bills, magazines, and food wrappers as well as pieces of art, photographs, and clothes—thousands of relics from the artist’s life that held more facts about Andy Warhol than any article ever could! “Just because people throw it out and don’t have any use for it, doesn’t mean it’s garbage,” the artist once said.
6. He almost didn’t survive the assassination attempt against him.
In 1968, actress and writer Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol, claiming he had “too much control in her life.” Hit by a single bullet, Warhol suffered damage to his esophagus, liver, lungs, spleen, and stomach, and was even declared clinically dead at the hospital, but a skilled doctor was able to restart his heart. Solanas was sentenced to three years in prison and soon diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
7. He was audited by the IRS each year starting in 1972 and blamed Richard Nixon for it.
The Internal Revenue Service first audited Andy Warhol in 1972, and continued to audit him every year until he died in 1987. Warhol believed that he was being unfairly targeted for a political painting he made in 1972, a political poster titled “Vote McGovern” that was an unflattering depiction of Republican Richard Nixon, who was running for reelection against progressive Democrat George McGovern at the time. Though Nixon ultimately won the election, during his 1974 impeachment trial, the House Judiciary Committee approved charges that he attempted to target opponents using the IRS.
8. Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum is one of the biggest museums in the world focused on a single artist.
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is devoted to Warhol’s work and is one of the largest museums in the world dedicated to a single artist, and the largest in North America. The museum is home to a collection of more than 500,000 objects that explore the life and artistry behind one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. “The Warhol,” as the museum is known, first opened in 1994 and was founded by the Dia Art Foundation, the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Warhol had established the Andy Warhol Foundation upon his death, and his will directed that the majority of his estate be used to promote the visual arts.
9. Warhol is buried near Pittsburgh, and a livestream shows his grave at all hours of the day.
Warhol died in 1987 due to complications from what should have been a routine gallbladder surgery. His brothers James and John traveled to New York to bring his body back to Pittsburgh, where he was buried in the Warhola family plot at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park. Warhol’s headstone is engraved with his name, though he was once quoted as saying, “I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’”
The Warhol maintains a livestream through which you can view the artist’s grave 24/7—a project called “Figment.”
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.
