LONDON, ENGLAND.- Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth-century. Warhol is world famous as a Pop artist, part of a group of artists who introduced the iconic images and mass-production techniques of contemporary society into fine art. Remarkably, this exhibition is the first-ever opportunity for a UK audience to see a major presentation of Warhol’s series of Hammer and Sickle drawings. Warhol represents mass-produced iconic images from contemporary society of people, products and objects that have a strong symbolic link to the fundamental themes of life including food, sex, death and power. These images include Campbell’s Soup, Marilyn Monroe, skulls, dollar bills and the hammer and sickle.

Hammer and Sickle at Haunch of Venison presents a group of over twenty drawings from the series of 1976-1977. At the time of their making during the Cold War the Hammer and Sickle was the best known symbol of the enemy, the USSR. By using this feared symbol of communism as the subject-matter of an object for sale in a Capitalist economy, Warhol’s work was seen as an ironic commentary on the War. However, by recreating this subject-matter from objects photographed in a range of new compositions, Warhol’s series can be seen to turn this symbol into a post-modern still-life. Ronnie Cutrone, the artist’s studio assistant, writing in the exhibition catalogue notes that Warhol "had reduced one of the most feared symbols on the planet to a simple still life.” Warhol’s critique of this powerful symbol now seems prescient of the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Warhol helped introduce the mass-production techniques of photography into the fine art practices of painting and drawing. In 1962 he invented a method of photographic silkscreen printing, and from 1972 he made a series of largescale finished drawings from projected templates of photographic images. The Hammer and Sickle drawings from 1976-77 were based on still-life arrangements which were photographed and projected onto paper. The outlines and deep shadows were then traced from the projected image onto the paper using a thick soft graphite pencil line. In a group of the drawings, he introduced a contrasting red wash.

With the exception of a hiatus from 1963 to 1972, Warhol drew prolifically throughout his career, from his days as an art student in the 1940s until the last few weeks before his death in 1987. His career was founded on the production of commercial art, primarily drawings, in the 1950s and early 1960s. It is the one medium that can be seen to extend from his earliest days as an art student in the 1940s to the last weeks before his death. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with a text by Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol’s studio assistant.