Warhol & Dance. New York in the 50s

The exhibition Warhol & Dance: New York in the 50s reflects the artist’s interest in this artform through 60 drawings of dancers, choreographers and critics, made in New York in the early 1950s. Warhol was barely 20 when he produced these drawings. The items in this exhibition came from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol arrived in New York in 1949. He found a noisy and vibrant city, where dance, music and performance had already made their mark on the American metropolis. One of the future masters of Pop Art, at the time Warhol was just over 20 years old and he had already shown interest in dance, even before he arrived in the Big Apple. He had attended modern dance classes at Carnegie Tech, in his hometown, and had been to performances by the leading dance troupes at the time in the US. A young Warhol, upon his arrival in New York, ‘was aware that creativity was a crucial element in the world of dance’, explains former New York Times dance critic, Anna Kisselgoff.

Images: © Sebastian Marjanov. Courtesy Ivorypress