COW 12
The Cow series was printed after Andy Warhol’s exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, which inspired the creation of the wallpaper. This screenprint, Cow 12, is detailed with a yellow foreground against an electric blue background.
COW 12 AS PART OF ANDY WARHOL’S LARGER BODY OF WORK
The Cow series consists of four screenprints of a realistic photographic image of a large cow head printed on wallpaper produced from 1966 to 1976. The inspiration for the Cow series stemmed from Ivan Karp, an instrumental art dealer in the 1960s. Karp once told Warhol “Why don’t you paint some cows? They’re so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.” (POPism: The Warhol Sixties, 22) Warhol’s Cow wallpaper was his formal effort to introduce the production of wallpaper into his creative repertoire. The wallpaper was first printed in 1966 to paper the gallery walls for Warhol’s exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery. The wallpaper was used twice more to line the walls of Warhol’s show.
