Andy Warhol — Hammer and Sickle For Sale

Andy Warhol — Hammer and Sickle

Andy Warhol's Hammer and Sickle series of 1977 is a characteristically deadpan engagement with Cold War iconography, elevating the Soviet emblem of industrial and agricultural labour to the same visual status Warhol had earlier afforded a Campbell's soup can or Marilyn Monroe's face — a politically charged symbol reduced to a pure graphic object. Warhol conceived the series following a 1976 trip to Italy, where he was struck by how frequently the hammer-and-sickle symbol appeared as street graffiti, stripped of its original ideological context and absorbed into everyday visual culture.

Rather than working from illustrations found in communist literature or propaganda, Warhol had an actual hammer and sickle purchased from a hardware store on Canal Street in New York, and had the tools photographed to serve as his source imagery — a typically literal-minded approach that turned an abstract political symbol back into a physical, commercially available object. The resulting portfolio comprises four screenprints on Strathmore Bristol paper, each sheet measuring approximately 30 x 40 inches, published in an edition of 50.

Rendered in Warhol's flat, high-contrast palette, the combination of political charge and graphic boldness makes Hammer and Sickle one of the most arresting series of his mid-career output. Impressions are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum Brandhorst in Munich.

Guy Hepner offers both individual prints and portfolio sets, each presented with full authentication.