This fall, members of Andy Warhol’s family plan to auction a group of early paintings he produced while enrolled in art school that have been left behind as part of his relatives’s estate. Estimated values of the tranche of early paintings have not been disclosed.
Courtesy Paul Warhola Family Collection
Warhol’s nephew, James Warhola (the Pop artist dropped the “a” in his surname), is tasked with selling the works alongside his six siblings. Warhola, who works an an illustrator and is based between Clinton Corners, New York and Oakland, Pittsburgh, and his siblings inherited the works from his father and mother, Paul and Anne Warhola, who died in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
Paul was one of Andy Warhol’s two brothers. Warhol died at age 58 in 1987 after surgical complications.
Works titled Nosepicker 1 (1948) and Living Room (1947), murky still life and portrait paintings that bare no resemblance the sleek silkscreens for which he is known, will be among the ten paintings the family is seeking to auction off. Warhol produced the paintings while studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) between 1945 and 1949.
According to a website cataloguing the works that is run by the family, Paul Warhola is credited with safeguarding them from being thrown out when the artist graduated and moved to New York. 14 works in total are said to have survived from that period.
Some of the works have been exhibited at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and in the recent traveling exhibition, “Andy Warhol: Lifetimes,” according to the Pennsylvania-based outlet Tribune-Review, which first reported the news.
In an interview, Warhola said proceeds from the paintings’ sale will be divided among him and his siblings. The family is currently vetting auction houses for the coming sale.