Andy Warhol — Toy Paintings For Sale

Andy Warhol — Toy Paintings

Andy Warhol's Toy Paintings were commissioned in 1982–83 by Zurich dealer Bruno Bischofberger, who asked Warhol to create a show explicitly pitched "for children." Rather than working from found or commercial photography, Warhol drew directly on his own private collection of vintage toys — largely wind-up tin toys and mid-century mechanical collectibles — painting and silkscreening images of the toys and their packaging onto small canvases. Subjects include the Moon Robot Explorer, Clockwork Panda Drummer and Space Ship, rendered in Warhol's flat, graphic style.

The individual canvases are notably small in scale, many measuring roughly 8 x 10 inches to 14 x 11 inches — a deliberate departure from the large-format works typical of much of Warhol's other painting series, and a formal choice suited to the exhibition's intended child's-eye viewing height. The resulting show opened at Bischofberger's Zurich gallery in December 1983 and ran into March 1984. Around 100 of the resulting Toy Paintings were subsequently acquired as a group by London gallerist Fabian Carlsson, together with Bischofberger, helping to keep a significant portion of the series together as a coherent body of work.

Playful on its surface, the series extends Warhol's long-standing fascination with consumer culture and mass-produced objects into the specific world of childhood and mechanical toys — a late-career return to the small-scale, object-based subject matter that had first shaped his commercial career.

Each work at Guy Hepner is presented with full authentication.