Untitled (Designs)

This selection of Andy Warhol's color drawings dates to his early career as an illustrator. Untitled (Circles) demonstrates the artist's ease with the sheer abstraction of geometric forms and pure color, two qualities he would later extol in his early silkscreen paintings just a few years later. The work has a resonance -- in its simplicity and jewel-like colors -- that still arrests artists working today. Damien Hirst's spot paintings, Bridget Riley's abstractions and even Fred Tomaselli's pill paintings rely on the same technique. Untitled (Designs) demonstrates the genesis of Warhol's silkscreen technique. Each design is composed of a single block of color over which a simple, repeated design is imposed. These early works were key to the artist's development and no doubt provided the confidence he needed to move forward to the silkscreen style that propelled him to fame just a few years later.