'Campbells Tomato Soup' by Andy Warhol, 2023 (printed)
27.5 x 20 Inches
Offset Lithograph on matte fine art paper, after the original famous artwork from 1961.
Limited Edition of 2500
Published by The McGaw group. Authorized by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and licensed by the Campbell Soup Company. Publishing details included on bottom. See photos.

ABOUT THE ART
Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans are perhaps the most well-known images of American modern art. Initially created as a series of thirty two canvases in 1962, the soup cans gained international acclaim as a breakthrough in Pop Art. When the paintings were first exhibited in that year, they were displayed together like products at a grocery store. Each soup can corresponded to a different flavor and resembled the actual image of the red and white Campbell’s Soup cans. Though they appeared identical to the well-known grocery items, the artist’s handiwork was evident through the slight variations in the lettering and in the hand-stamped fluer-de-lis symbols on the bottom of each can. This juxtaposition between pure replication and the artist’s hand makes the series all the more intriguing.

Warhol’s inspiration for the series developed from his personal life. He explains “I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” This sense of repetition was definitely both internalized by the artist and embodied by commercial mass culture. Initially, the debut of the Campbell’s Soup Cans was widely contested as many viewers struggled to grapple with such flagrant appropriation of a commonplace object. However, Warhol would take the themes of repetition and mass production further by creating two portfolios of Campbell’s Soup Can screen prints in 1968.