Andy Warhol: Sixty Last Suppers

Warhol’s The Last Supper project was a commission by the renowned gallerist Alexandre Iolas in 1984, in response to Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. As with most subjects, Warhol approached The Last Supper through mediations of the original, rather than the original itself. He used a commercial reproduction of Da Vinci’s famous mural painting to create more than 60 silkscreens, paintings, and works on paper. The seeming irreverence for the distinctions between the sacred and the profane, high art and commercial design reflects Warhol’s inevitable transformation of a deeply religious work into a cliché whose profound message has become muted through repetition. For the 30th anniversary of the death of Andy Warhol (1928-1987), part of the cycle is temporarily back in Milan and on display. Find out more about the Andy Warhol exhibition from the Museo del Novecento’s website.

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Sixty Last Suppers (1986), Andy Warhol © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian

Andy Warhol at the opening of Andy Warhol – Il Cenacolo at Palazzo delle Stelline, Milan,
January 22, 1987. © Maria Mulas. Courtesy Gagosian

Source material for Andy Warhol’s Last Supper, 1980s. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Last Supper (1985), Andy Warhol. © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Gagosian

Andy Warhol in front of The Last Supper (Yellow) (1986) at the
opening of Andy Warhol –
Il Cenacolo at Palazzo delle Stelline, Milan, January 22, 1987. © Archivio Garghetti. Courtesy Gagosian.