1964 - Flower, II.6

Signature Notes: signed and dated '64 in pen lower right; some signed i pencil

Dimensions: 23 x 23

Notes: The Mandrinette is a highly rare, local shrub. Andy Warhol made prints of the Mandrinette with petals in different colors based on a photograph by the nature photographer Patricia Caulfield. One print in the collection from the series titled Flowers (1974), which is unique in Warhol's oeuvre for their delicacy. Borrowing from magazines and a wallpaper catalogue, the artist first crops and abstracts the images. Then, with characteristic inversion, he personalizes the flower prints, adding by hand delicate washes of Dr. Martin's aniline watercolor dyes.

The present work is one of only seven monumental-scale paintings from Andy Warhol's famous Flowers series, which the artist showed at a sell-out exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1964 and with Galerie Sonnabend in Paris in May 1965. The two shows comprised of densely hung canvases of flowers in various sizes and brilliant Day-Glo hues, all appropriated by Warhol from a photograph of hibiscus blossoms that had appeared in the June 1964 issue of Popular Photography. Warhol was at the height of his creative powers and international fame, and as David Bourdon writes, the "cheerful and refreshing Flowers series includes some of Warhol's most lushly colored, decorative, and ingratiating paintings." (D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York 1989, p. 191).