Printed by

Alexander Heinrici, New York

Published by

Luciano Anselmino, Milan

Dimensions

Sheet: 110.7 × 73.3 cm (43⅝ × 28⅞ in.)

Literature

Feldman, Frayda and Jörg Schellmann. Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962–1987. (Feldman & Schellmann II.136, p.91)

Condition

A fine impression with vibrant colours and excellent registration. Signed, dated and numbered on the reverse. In very good condition.

Catalogue Note

Created in 1975, Ladies and Gentlemen is one of Andy Warhol's most important and socially significant print portfolios. Departing from his celebrated portraits of celebrities and public figures, Warhol turned his attention to members of New York's Black and Hispanic drag community, producing a powerful series that celebrates identity, performance and self-expression.

The project was commissioned by the Italian collector and publisher Luciano Anselmino, who invited Warhol to produce a new portfolio. Rather than relying upon publicity photographs or media imagery, Warhol personally photographed his sitters in his studio. With the assistance of Bob Colacello, editor of Interview magazine, a group of drag performers was recruited from the Gilded Grape nightclub in Greenwich Village. Although many of the participants remained unidentified for years, recent scholarship has restored the identities of several of Warhol's remarkable subjects, highlighting their contribution to one of the artist's most compelling bodies of work.

Warhol transformed these photographs into vibrant screenprints, layering bold passages of colour over expressive photographic imagery. The resulting compositions oscillate between portrait, performance and abstraction, reflecting the fluidity of identity while celebrating individuality and theatrical self-fashioning. Far from being conventional portraits, the works explore questions of gender, glamour, celebrity and visibility that remain strikingly relevant today.

Produced in an edition of only 125 impressions, the Ladies and Gentlemen portfolio occupies a pivotal position within Warhol's printmaking career. Increasingly recognised as one of his most important late series, these works represent a rare moment in which Warhol focused his attention on figures from outside the worlds of politics, wealth and popular entertainment, creating portraits of extraordinary dignity, vitality and humanity.

Today, the series is widely regarded as one of the defining artistic statements on identity and representation produced during the 1970s and remains among the most sought-after portfolios in Warhol's graphic oeuvre.