Trained as an illustrator, the artist never stopped drawing, including after the adoption of the mechanical processes that marked his work. Drawing thus appears as a site of constant experimentation, where images are constructed and a singular visual thinking unfolds. From a first Self-Portrait dated 1942 to the acrylic drawings for The Last Supper in 1986, Warhol's drawn output is abundant and varied. Portraits, caricatures, genre scenes, advertising illustrations, self-promotional portfolios: drawing remained his tool of choice until the end of the 1950s. It allowed him to gradually free himself from the influences of Klee, Picasso, Cocteau, as well as American artists such as Shahn. Through drawing, Andrew Warhola became Andy Warhol.
After a period dominated by painting and then film between 1963 and 1973, he returned to drawing with new objectives linked to his pictorial production, notably commissioned portraits, of which the one of Mao constitutes a major example. Drawing then becomes a space of experimentation: it allows him to work on chromatic, graphic and conceptual choices, often at a scale close to that of the paintings.
The itinerary is structured around five thematic sections: beginnings as an advertising illustrator, the importance of handwriting, fascination with faces and masks, gay iconography long kept confidential, and reflections on death, which became an obsession after the 1968 attack that nearly cost him his life.
The exhibition brings together around 150 drawings, as well as paintings, screenprints on paper, photographs and archival documents. It highlights the artist's technical inventiveness and the processes he developed (stamps, transferred lines, stencils, collages), conceived for the reproduction and repetition of images. Drawings and documents, rare or overlooked, provide access to the making of the work and enter the heart of the artist's New York studio, The Factory. So many leads that invite a reconsideration of Warhol's entire oeuvre from this dialogue between gesture and reproduction, between hand and machine.