Facts about Campbell's Soup Cans
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Each of the 32 Campbell's Soup Cans paintings was hand-painted rather than silkscreened, with Warhol reportedly tracing projected images to achieve their precise, mechanical-looking appearance.
- 13
Warhol produced enlarged versions of Campbell's Soup Cans reaching 72 inches tall in the late 1960s, transforming the modest 20-by-16-inch originals into monumental pop art sculptures.
- 12
Exhibitions of Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans faced initial rejection from major galleries, with MoMA and the Whitney Museum declining to show the series before the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles agreed to present it in July 1962.
- 11
A single Campbell's Soup Cans painting measuring 20 by 16 inches sold for $11.6 million at Christie's in 2015, doubling its estimated value.
- 10
Warhol's decision to use commercial silkscreen printing methods for Campbell's Soup Cans challenged traditional fine art practices by deliberately blurring the distinction between mass production and high art.
- 09
Approximately 100 million reproductions of Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans design have been printed on commercial products including posters, merchandise, and advertisements since the original 1962 exhibition.
- 08
Warhol's silkscreen printing technique allowed him to produce multiple versions of Campbell's Soup Cans with slight color variations, creating around 250 individual prints across different editions between 1962 and 1970.
- 07
Thirty-two individual paintings comprise Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans series, each measuring 20 by 16 inches and displayed together as a complete installation at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles during 1962.
- 06
Tomato soup, the most recognizable flavor in Warhol's series, remains Campbell's best-selling variety with over 40 percent of the company's soup sales annually.
- 05
Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist both created pop art works inspired by commercial products in 1962, the same year Warhol painted Campbell's Soup Cans, establishing pop art as a major movement.
- 04
Campbell's Soup Cans became iconic partly because Warhol selected the brand after seeing it in a friend's kitchen, making the work a celebration of mass-produced American consumer goods.
- 03
Warhol's original Campbell's Soup Cans series sold at auction for $11.7 million in 2006, establishing a record price for the artist's work at that time.
- 02
The Museum of Modern Art in New York paid $200 million in 2011 to acquire one Campbell's Soup Cans painting from a private collection, making it among the most expensive contemporary artworks ever purchased.
- 01
In 1962, Andy Warhol created his Campbell's Soup Cans series featuring 32 canvases, one for each soup variety the company offered at that time.