Andy Warhol: Still Lifes and Feet 1956-1961

From his student days in late 1940s Pittsburgh, right up until the weeks before his death in 1987, Andy Warhol drew prolifically. In his studies of the human form, he returned time and time again to portraits of shoes and feet. Executed with ballpoint pen in sketchbooks, these elegant, minimal drawings alternately depict bare feet, or feet in shoes, socks and slippers, and feet posed with various props–paint brushes, wooden blocks, books and of course a Campbell’s soup can. As in his other drawings, Warhol’s line conveys a Cocteau-like delicacy and fragility that seems far from his more familiar screenprints. Accompanying a January 2010 show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, Still Lifes and Feet 1956-1961 presents 58 of Warhol’s foot and shoe drawings, all of which are reproduced here for the first time. The volume makes for an intimate record of Warhol’s well-known pecadillos and his dexterous draughtsmanship.