Andy Warhol Vanitas tentoonstelling bij SCHUNCK in Heerlen

Andy Warhol: Vanitas

Andy Warhol, Self-portrait with Skull, 1977, PolaroidTM Polacolor Type 108. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.1.2866 © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2025.

SCHUNCK Museum together with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh presents the exhibition Andy Warhol: Vanitas. Vanitas shows more than a hundred works and objects from the Andy Warhol Museum's collection. 

Andy Warhol: Vanitas focuses on the theme of religion in Warhol's work and life, as previously explored in the successful exhibition Andy Warhol: Revelation (2019) at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Vanitas explores the themes of impermanence and finitude in the artist's life and work. 

Vanitas 

The exhibition explores Warhol's fascination with temporality, spiritualism and astrology. Vanitas features paintings and a rarely shown series of drawings of skulls and self-portraits. These are reminiscent of the 17th-century Vanitas genre in visual art, which was especially popular among Dutch and Flemish painters. Vanitas - Latin for both 'vanity' and 'emptiness' - is an art genre that uses symbolism to show the transience of life, inevitable death and the futility of vanity. These themes, and a sense of spirituality regarding the passage of time and physical impermanence, are explored through multimedia works and archival objects from Warhol's Time Capsules.

 
Andy Warhol Vanitas tentoonstelling bij SCHUNCK in Heerlen

Andy Warhol, Skull, 1976. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.1.182 © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2025.

120 works and objects from personal archive 

Among the works on display in the exhibition are the famous series of painted Self Portraits (1986) with a 'fright wig', the blacklight painting The Last Supper (1986), a series of silkscreens in weathered black-and-white tones of Marilyn Monroe called the Reversal Series (c. 1978), and iconic silkscreens from Warhol's Death and Disaster series, such as White Burning Car III (1963), as well as a series of iconic Shadows (1979) paintings. Personal items by Warhol such as wigs, pink corsets and Chinese astrology charts complete the exhibition. SCHUNCK Museum curated this unique collection in close collaboration with Patrick Moore, former director of The Andy Warhol Museum and curator of this exhibition. The artworks and objects in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Vanitas have never before been shown in this combination in Europe.