VIENNA.- The auction of 221 drawings by Pop Art icon Andy Warhol is nothing short of a sensation. On 27 March 2025, Dorotheum is offering an extraordinary selection of works on paper by one of the most significant artists of the 20th century in its online auction, "Andy Warhol – The 1950s Drawings from Daniel Blau." With remarkably moderate starting prices, this sale promises to be particularly exciting for art lovers.
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The drawings on offer boast a unique provenance: the renowned Munich gallery owner Daniel Blau, son of painter Georg Baselitz, discovered them in 2011 within Warhol's personal estate at the Warhol Foundation Archive. He was able to acquire the drawings, which had been registered in 1990 but subsequently left largely unnoticed, and to research them from an art historical perspective. After over three decades as one of the world's leading dealers in works on paper, Blau is now parting with his Munich gallery and has entrusted more than 400 works to Dorotheum for auction.
Created in the 1950s, these original works on paper offer an unexpected glimpse into Andy Warhol's early artistic output. Carefully preserved by the artist himself, the drawings are executed in pencil or ink, sometimes accented with gouache or collaged with adhesive tape. Their starting prices range from €800 to €4,000. Warhol’s later unmistakable style is already evident in these works, as is his preferred subject matter: nudes, floral arrangements and still lifes. Many of these rediscovered drawings were inspired by photographs or magazine illustrations, such as those from the legendary American LIFE magazine. They present a lesser-known side to the artist, which, as Blau emphasises, integrates seamlessly into the history of European art, and is reminiscent of earlier 20th-century masters such as Schiele, Cocteau, Matisse and Klimt.
Many of the works consist of two mirrored images—an original ink drawing and a monotype created from it—marking the birth of the "series" in Warhol’s oeuvre. Warhol also employed this technique, known as "blotted line," in many of his characteristic early commercial illustrations. According to Warhol biographer David Bourdon, ‘his lines appeared to skip across the page in irregular dots and blotches, conveying a lively, pulsating energy.’
In 2013, Warhol‘s drawings were displayed in a first major touring exhibition, ‘From Silverpoint to Silver Screen – Andy Warhol 1950s Drawings’, which travelled from the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark, to the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands, and finally to the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Numerous other exhibitions followed, featuring works now up for auction, including at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Le Locle (Switzerland), the New York Academy of Art and Vienna’s mumok (2020). The Kunstsammlung Jena also displayed a selection of these works in ‘Follow George Grosz’, an exhibition that placed Warhol’s art in dialogue with the New Objectivity movement.
In addition to this extraordinary group of works, a second auction is scheduled to take place on 28 March 2025, featuring Daniel Blau's collection of works on paper by George Grosz, Markus Lüpertz, Per Kirkeby and Neal Fox, among others.
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