Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, as we know him today, was born Andre Warhla on August 6th, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the 4th child born to his parents, having two older brothers, and a brother that he never meet, seeing as how the family immigrated her from Slovakia in the early 1900s, and he died before they moved. His father moved here in 1914 to work in a coal mine, his mother shortly joined him after the death of her grandparents in 1927. However, his father died a short 4 years after from an accident in the coal mines. His family was devout Byzantine Catholic, which he was a believer and a avid one at that till the day he died, despite his homosexuality.
As a child he was diagnosed with Chorea, a symptom of having scarlet fever as a child. This disease left him bed-ridden as a child, which made him an easy target for ridicule from other children in the community where they lived. This made him cling to his mother and draw to help the time and the illness pass. He says that he does not resent that time because it was time he needed

to develop his skills and preferences towards the arts. The main infliction that this disease left him with was the inability to control his movements, so he worked on refining the random and rapid movements so that he could continue his art pieces.
He had his first solo gallery opening on July 9th, 1962 in Los Angeles. This exhibition marked the start of pop art in the west. The exhibit included his 100 Campbell's soup cans, 100 Coke bottles, 100 dollar bills, and his tribute to Marilyn Monroe, seeing as how she died a few weeks before the opening, Marilyn Diptych. He was ridiculed for making a business out or art and making iconic American images available to the world.

After this opening he had enough money to open his first studio, which he offered to many up-in-coming artists as a haven for artistic development, sexual experimentation, and just as a hangout. It was called The Factory. The studio was in downtown New York and was the place for many of his pieces of artwork to become the icons they are today.
Unfortunately, one of these artists that he opened his doors to, Valerie Solanas, tried to murder him on July 3rd, 1968, only two days before the assignation of JFK. This artist was part of the factory scene and appeared in many of Warhol's videos and production because of her beauty. While in The Factory, she started a movement named S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Down Men). I think that you can figure out what their main opposition was. Andy Warhol was seriously injured by the shot fired by Solanas, damaging his heart, lungs, and spleen. It is said that the physicians had to hold his heart and massage it, so that it would regain movement. Solanas was arrested and said that that main reason why she shot him was because he had too much control over her life because he was in love with her, which was by no means true, Warhol says.
In the 1980s his work really took off when he started painting pop icons, such as Michael Jackson. This paining lead to him producing Thriller, which was a major success in Jackson's career.
He dies on February 22, 1987 due to a cardiac arithmea during his sleep while recovering from a gallbladder surgery. He is buried in the St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Pennsylvania.