FTS Palettes - Andy Warhol

Inspired by Andy Warhol's Shot Light Blue Marilyn (1964), our palette features five carefully selected colours, available in New Zealand wool and 8-ply acrylic.

ANDY WARHOL

1928–1987 · American · Pop Art

Andy Warhol was an artist who looked at a tin of soup and thought, "That belongs in a museum." And somehow, he was right. From Campbell's Soup cans to Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and the occasional banana, Warhol turned everyday consumer culture into extraordinary art. He blurred the line between high art and advertising so successfully that we're still not entirely sure where one ends and the other begins.

When it came to colour, subtlety wasn't exactly his thing. Electric pink, screaming yellow, radioactive green and enough contrasting colours to give a traditional painter a nervous breakdown. Armed with a silkscreen and an apparently endless supply of celebrity faces, Warhol made repetition an art form, proving that if something looks good once, it might look even better twenty-five times in twenty-five completely different colours.

His influence on art, fashion and design is almost impossible to escape. Warhol taught us that colours don't necessarily have to match, perfection is overrated, and even a humble soup can can become a superstar. Not bad for a man who once said, "I want to be a machine."

SHOT LIGHT BLUE MARILYN (1964)

Few faces have had quite as many colour makeovers as Marilyn Monroe's, courtesy of Andy Warhol. His famous Marilyn series transformed the Hollywood icon into a Pop Art superstar, with each version sporting an entirely different colour combination.

Our palette takes its inspiration from Shot Light Blue Marilyn (1964): a glorious collision of powder blue, candyfloss pink, peroxide yellow, turquoise eyeshadow and bright red lips, all held together by dramatic black detailing.

It's a combination that probably shouldn't work, but absolutely does. And the rather alarming title? It comes from an incident at Warhol's Factory when a visitor asked if she could shoot the paintings. Warhol agreed, assuming she meant with a camera. She had other ideas.