User:Sandy267/sandbox/Soupcans

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The Soup Cans are among the last paintings Warhol executed by hand; soon after completing this series, he began using silk-screening as his primary method of creating paintings.

The Premiere

Warhol sent Blum thirty-two 20-by-16-inch (510 mm × 410 mm) canvases of Campbell's Soup can portraits, each representing a particular variety of the Campbell's Soup flavors available at the time. The thirty-two canvases are very similar: each is a somewhat stylized depiction of the iconic, mostly red and white Campbell's Soup on a white background, based on an image of the tomato soup can used by the Cambell's company on its stationery. To create the works, Warhol first penciled outlines of the cans onto each canvas without the soup variety information, using either a stencil or projected transparency (it is not certain which). Separately, he hand-lettered small slips with the variety names and ancillary label information (such as the banners) and projected these onto the canvases and traced them. The hand lettering accounts for the slight differences in the style and size of the wording on the individual canvases. After painting the works, many of which have minor variations in tone relative to others in the set, he applied the gold design at the bottom by hand with a stamp he made.

References

Frei, Georg; Printz, Neil, eds. (2002). The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné Vol. 1: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963. London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 9780714840864.

Campbell's Soup drawing [Pop Art section]

Warhol may have used this or similar drawings in the process of laying in pencil outlines on the canvases before painting. The image is based on a Campbell's Soup Company stationery logo.