Campbell's Soup Cans is a series of 32 paintings produced by American artist Andy Warhol between 1961 and 1962. Each painting depicts a different variety of Campbell's soup cans in a uniform 20-by-16-inch format. First exhibited in July 1962 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, the pop art works challenged traditional distinctions between fine art and commercial imagery. Warhol's association with the subject led to his name becoming synonymous with the Campbell's soup cans. The series catapulted Warhol to fame and contributed to critical discourse about originality, reproduction, and the meaning of art in a consumer society.
Drawing on his background as a commercial illustrator, Warhol focused on the packaging of everyday items, making high art of the artistic depiction of the commercial packaging rather than of the everyday items themselves, prompting initial controversy but eventual acclaim. The Campbell's Soup Cans series generally refers to the original 32 canvases, but it also encompasses Warhol's many subsequent variations: approximately 20 similar paintings produced in the early 1960s; a 1965 set of 20 larger multi-colored canvases; numerous related drawings, sketches, and stencils created over the years; and two separate editions of 250 ten-print screen print portfolios issued in 1968 and 1969. The original 32 canvases were preserved by art dealer Irving Blum and later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1996.
Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans are widely regarded as a canonical symbol of Pop art and one of the most influential bodies of art of the 20th century. The later sets of screen prints are sometimes confused with the original 1962 series, and unauthorized prints have also circulated. Despite this, the series has maintained a lasting presence in popular culture, inspiring derivative works by other artists and achieving multimillion-dollar results in the art market.
Background Andy Warhol moved to New York City in 1949 after studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and quickly found success as a commercial illustrator, with his first published drawing appearing in Glamour that same year. As a student at Carnegie Tech, Warhol developed his signature "blotted line" technique from tracing images on paper and blotting the wet ink to create irregular, variable lines. Using this technique, he duplicated and varied motifs, often drawing on images from the New York Public Library. Warhol held his first gallery exhibition in 1952 at the Bodley Gallery and, throughout the 1950s, regularly showed drawings and exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in 1956. He subsequently used photographs taken by his one-time lover Edward Wallowitch as source material for his drawings, notably his self-published A Gold Book (1957).
By 1961, Warhol began producing canvases based on comic strips and newspaper advertisements. He was able to get exposure for these works by using them as a backdrop for his Bonwit Teller window design in April 1961. Yet he remained behind some of his peers in securing gallery representation. Having been rejected by the Leo Castelli Gallery for similarities in his work to the style of comics done by Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol was seeking a distinct direction within the emerging Pop art movement. He turned to everyday commercial imagery such as Campbell's soup cans, dollar bills, and Coca-Cola bottles. In 1961, Warhol said, "I've got to do something that really will have a lot of impacts that will be different enough from Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist, that will be very personal, that won't look like I'm doing exactly what they're doing."
Technique and production During this period, Warhol was wavering between action painting and abstract expressionism, with his style of drip painting. Experimenting with hand painting, stenciling, and rubber stamps, he began to standardize his process using acrylic paint and serial repetition. Warhol was influenced by the painter Max Arthur Cohn's screen printing technique."Max Arthur Cohn" at SAAM. In late 1961, Warhol began learning silkscreen printing from Floriano Vecchi of Tiber Press, refining his technique through repeated visits and advice on pigments and squeegee handling. Warhol moved toward silkscreening to increase efficiency, which would define his later practice. Soon, Warhol had mastered the process of pushing ink through a glue-prepared silk screen with a rubber squeegee. In late 1961, Warhol began working on Campbell's Soup Cans at his home studio at 1342 Lexington Avenue in New York. The series consisted of 32 hand-painted canvases, each depicting a different variety of Campbell's soup. They were based on photographs taken by his former boyfriend Edward Wallowitch. Contrary to later confusion, the works were not silkscreens but traced and painted canvases incorporating stamped details. Warhol used a rubber stamp to apply the gold fleur-de-lis near the lower portion of each image and worked with commercial-grade acrylic paint rather than the oil paint more typical of fine art. These were among the last works Warhol painted largely by hand.
Between November 1961 and mid-1962, he painted roughly fifty soup-can canvases, including the definitive set of thirty-two completed by June 1962. According to the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, the project also included three large grid paintings (one depicting 200 cans and two depicting 100 cans) and numerous related still lifes. By March 1962, art critic David Bourdon had seen examples of Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans when he visited his studio, as others soon did. When art dealer Irving Blum visited Warhol's studio in May 1962, Warhol was working on his sixteenth soup can painting. Blum was surprised to learn that Warhol did not yet have gallery representation and offered him an exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.
Warhol was featured in a May 11, 1962, Time magazine article "The Slice-of-Cake School", which noted that he was "currently occupied with a series of 'portraits' of Campbell's soup cans in living colour." Warhol quoted as saying, "I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use every day and never think about...I'm working on soup...I just do it because I like it."
Exhibitions
Ferus Gallery exhibition In June 1962, Warhol sent Blum the 32 completed canvases, each measuring 20-by-16-inches. A June 26 postcard from Blum confirmed their arrival and advised keeping prices low during the initial Los Angeles showing.
The exhibition opened July 9, 1962, at the Ferus Gallery, with Warhol absent and without a formal opening. The opening coincided with La Cienega Boulevard's popular Monday Art Walk. The paintings were displayed in a single row on narrow ledges, like grocery items on a shelf. This untraditional presentation choice of the interjection of pop culture into art converted the gallery exhibition into a statement about the boundaries of commercial enterprise. Initially, the installation left many visitors perplexed, uncertain how to interpret the repeated image of a commonplace supermarket product displayed as high art.
Only five or six paintings were sold, including Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato), which was reserved by actor Dennis Hopper before the opening. When no further buyers emerged, Blum had the idea to keep all 32 works together as a set. Blum later recalled that he contacted the clients who had bought paintings, including Hopper, Betty Asher, Don Factor, Bob Rowan, and Edwin Janss, and asked them to relinquish their purchases. The buyers agreed, and because the paintings had not yet been delivered and remained in the gallery, Blum was able to acquire the complete set himself. After securing the paintings, Blum contacted Warhol and asked to purchase the entire set. Warhol offered the group for $1,000 ($ in ), and the two agreed to a payment plan under which Blum paid in ten monthly installments of $100 ($ in ). Reportedly, Factor, who is said to have also chosen Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato), "never forgave" Blum. Blum acknowledged there was "a certain amount of anger" as Warhol's market value rose substantially through the years.
The exhibition closed on August 4, 1962, the same day actress Marilyn Monroe died. Shortly afterward, Warhol began producing silkscreen portraits of Monroe, further expanding his exploration of celebrity imagery. His second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in October 1963 featured silkscreen portraits of Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. Blum used the lure of Hollywood celebrity to entice Warhol for the second exhibition. Dennis Hopper and his then-wife Brooke Hayward held a welcoming party for the event to help Warhol meet West Coast artists and celebrities.
Subsequent early exhibitions Although Warhol had yet to receive an offer for full-time gallery representation, art dealers Allan Stone and Martha Jackson spent a few months planning a December 1962 exhibition of his work. Jackson ultimately canceled the show while Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans were still on view at Ferus Gallery, writing in a letter that her gallery was committed to artists of an earlier generation and that introducing his work had caused "very bad repercussions." Despite this, Jackson accepted several paintings on consignment, and her assistant, John Weber, sold ten of them.
In August 1962, Warhol's Pop art received its first museum presentation in a survey when Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) was included in a group exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. In October 1962, Warhol participated in Sidney Janis Gallery's landmark exhibition The New Realists: An Exhibition of Factual Painting & Sculpture, showing 200 Soup Cans, Big Campbell's Soup Can (Beef Noodle), and other works alongside artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg. The exhibition had a major impact on the New York art world and helped establish Pop art as a nationally recognized movement. Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibition opened on November 6, 1962, at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery. Although no soup cans were included, the show featured works such as Marilyn Diptych and earned strong critical praise.
For the landmark 1964 American Supermarket exhibition at the Bianchini Gallery in Manhattan, Warhol chose a screen print of Campbell's Soup Cans alongside his box sculptures, and actual autographed cans, which he jokingly referred to as his "Duchamp number," underscoring the readymade tradition. Fans frequently sought his signature on Campbell soup cans, and Warhol often obliged.
Critical reception The initial reaction to the exhibition was marked by skepticism and sales were minimal, but the show quickly propelled art and commerce to a trending topic status. The nearby Primus Stuart Gallery mocked the show by stacking a pyramid of real Campbell's soup cans in its window beneath a sign reading, "Do Not Be Misled. Get the Original. Our Low Price 2 for 33 Cents."
The Los Angeles Times published a cartoon ridiculing the paintings, and critic Jack Smith questioned whether Warhol was serious, writing that he briefly suspected "Mr. Warhol might have had his tongue in his cheek." However, Irving Blum, proprietor of the Ferus Gallery, insisted otherwise: "This young fellow is deadly serious." Blum argued that Warhol was introducing subject matter in "a very new, fresh way," describing the paintings as possessing "a relentlessness… with a terrifying, Kafkaesque intensity." While acknowledging that their ultimate importance in art history remained to be seen, Blum maintained that he was convinced of their validity.