Andy Warhol's final works were a series of pictures and drawings commissioned by Daimler. They are on view at the Albertina Museum in Vienna.



More...

 

“Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé, 1954″ by Andy Warhol.
In 1986, Daimler-Benz commissioned the pop artist Andy Warhol to make a series of paintings to celebrate the automaker’s centennial. The plan was for 80 works, and the subjects would be 20 of Daimler’s most important cars, including the Benz Patent Motorwagen of 1886, the first car ever built. But Warhol died on Feb. 22, 1987, of a heart attack shortly after gall bladder surgery. At the time of his death, he had completed only 35 silkscreens and 12 large-scale drawings. They were his last works.
Albertina Museum “Mercedes-Benz W 125 Grand Prix Car, 1937″ by Andy Warhol.

The Daimler Warhols were shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1988. In her review of the exhibition, The Times’s Roberta Smith called the works “innocuous” and a “not uninteresting refresher course” on the great pop artist. She writes, “It reduces the artist to his essence, reacquainting the viewer with his painting techniques, the emotional range of his art and his unique strengths as a colorist. We see the old early Warhol, whom we may love best – the master of repeating checkerboard images of consumer goods and movie stars – using a group of images new to his repertory: the stars of car design.”
The 47 pieces belong to the Daimler Art Collection and, according to Der Spiegel, for the first time since 1988 they are being shown together to the public. This past January, the Albertina Museum in Vienna opened the exhibition “Andy Warhol. Cars,” which also includes works by Robert Longo, Vincent Szarek and Sylvie Fleury, totaling 60 pieces.
According to the museum, the connection between Warhol and the Daimler commission reflected more than marketing prowess. The museum notes that while cars “emerged sporadically” in the works of Italian Futurists, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the automobile “became a motif in its own right.” And artists like Warhol and Tom Wesselmann were on the forefront of that movement.
“Warhol’s series ‘Death and Disaster’ and his car crash pictures are based on photographs from the mass media of his day,” said the museum in its news release. “They depict cars as causing catastrophes or as metaphors of sudden destruction and destiny.”
The car-crash series was produced in the early 1960s and are not included in the Albertina exhibition. The works in the Daimler series are far more passive. They were all based on Daimler photographs.
“Andy Warhol. Cars” runs through May 16 at the Albertina in Vienna,