Andy Warhol & Rosenthal - Happy bug day (Tasse und Teller)

Andy Warhol for Rosenthal, cup and plate Happy bug day, circa 2002.

Printed porcelain, cup: 10.9 x 12 cm (dimensions including handle), diameter 9 cm; plate: 21.5 cm diameter and 2 cm high.

Rare and sold-out coffee mug and plate set, authorized by the Andy Warhol Foundation. The mug and plate are new and unused.

Biography
The American Pop Art artist Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 as Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents were Czechoslovak immigrants. He first trained as a window dresser before studying art history, pictorial design, sociology, and psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949. He then moved to New York, where he adopted the name Andy Warhol.
Until 1960 Warhol worked as a freelance commercial illustrator for fashion magazines, as an illustrator, and as a window dresser. The Art Directors Club awarded him medals in 1952 and 1957 for his design of newspaper advertisements. In 1952 Hugo Gallery hosted Warhol’s first exhibition, “Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote.”
In 1962 the first series with “Campbell’s Soup Doses” and “Coca-Cola Bottles” emerged, as well as silkscreens depicting dollar bills. His studio, filled with friends and assistants, he called the “Factory.” His art popularized the use of well-known motifs or icons from everyday mass culture, and he employed mechanically serial production processes, like silkscreen printing, which had previously been deemed unartistic.
In 1962 Warhol participated in the exhibition “The New Realists” in New York. In the following years Warhol’s subject matter darkened. Series emerged featuring death and catastrophe imagery. In silkscreen and deliberately in the poor quality of newspaper printing, he selected plane crashes, traffic accidents, crime, and atomic bomb explosions. Also with cardboard and wooden sculptures that precisely imitate commercial packaging, Warhol critiqued consumer and mass culture. With his works, Andy Warhol helped shape Pop Art.
In the 1960s Warhol also explored film as a medium. He developed a distinct film aesthetic using simple techniques, long static takes, and a lack of cutting and editing. In 1963 the silent films “Sleep,” “Kiss,” and “Eat” were made, and in 1964 “Empire.” The following sound films were also shown at the Cannes Film Festival, such as 1966’s “Chelsea Girls.” From 1966, Warhol also collaborated with the rock band “Velvet Underground” on shows for nightclubs.
In the 1970s the Pop Art figure transferred Polaroid photographs of famous personalities to canvas via silkscreen, including portraits like “Elvis Presley” (1964), “Jackie Kennedy” (1965), “Marilyn Monroe” (1967), and “Mao Zedong” (1972).
In 1968 Andy Warhol was shot and seriously wounded by Valerie Solanas. In 1984 Warhol collaborated on projects with artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente.
Andy Warhol died on February 22, 1987 in New York.