Watercolor Paint Kit with Brushes (Unique)

A unique screenprint by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an accomplished artist across disciplines – drawing, photography, screenprinting, painting, sculpture, film – and was quite prolific. His oeuvre spans subject matter from portraits to still lifes to landscapes, and he is said to have created over 9,000 paintings and sculptures and 12,000 drawings in the course of his career.[1]

Yet, Warhol created few works like Watercolor Paint Kit with Brushes that pay tribute to that which made him famous—that is, the foundations and tools of art-making. The subject of a watercolor paint kit is perhaps even more tongue-in-cheek for Warhol, who eschewed paint and brush for several decades of his career. Indeed, he told TIME magazine in 1963: “Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I’d like to be a machine. Wouldn’t you?”[2]

Warhol’s Watercolor Paint Kit with Brushes is particularly indicative of his process. There exist polaroid photographs, drawings, and unique screenprints of the subject, all of which led to a regular edition of prints created in 1982. The screenprint was physically quite small (nine by twelve inches) and created in an edition of 500 plus proofs. It was made to raise funds for the New York Association for the Blind.