Andy Warhol — Camouflage For Sale

Andy Warhol — Camouflage

Andy Warhol's Camouflage works of 1986–87 were the last major series he completed before his death in February 1987. Applying standard military camouflage patterning to subjects ranging from his own face to Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper and pure abstract fields, Warhol used the pattern's essential function — to conceal, to hide in plain sight — as a metaphor for identity, celebrity and the construction of persona that had preoccupied him throughout his career.

The series exists both as a portfolio of screenprints and as unique paintings. The print portfolio, published in 1987 as an edition of 80 on Lenox Museum Board, was printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, Warhol's longtime collaborator through the 1980s, and reworks the camouflage pattern using unconventional, highly saturated Pop-art colour combinations rather than traditional khaki and olive tones. The most iconic variant is the Camouflage Self-Portrait, in which the pattern is layered directly over Warhol's own features, dissolving his image into the very device designed for concealment. An impression from the series is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As Warhol's final sustained body of work, Camouflage carries particular weight within his catalogue — a closing statement from an artist who had spent three decades interrogating surface, repetition and the mechanics of image-making.

Each work at Guy Hepner is presented with full documentation.