Indianapolis Star / Lilly St. Angelo

 

 

 

Drawings and photographs by Andy Warhol never before seen by the public will make their world debut in Indianapolis next month at downtown Long-Sharp Gallery.

The exhibit, Andy Warhol: A Survey of Portrait and Figurative Drawings from the Mid-1950s, will celebrate Warhol's birthday and the gallery's 15th anniversary on its opening date: Aug. 6. Warhol, who died Feb 22, 1987, would have been 93.

Gallery owner and Warhol super-fan Rhonda Long-Sharp said the gallery bought the nearly two dozen drawings and dozen photos over the years from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

 

 

Long-Sharp said the drawings are of people: famous actresses on Broadway, dancers he would see in New York shows, men in drag, men in the gay community and others he encountered in his life in New York and in his world travels.

 

"As a kid, he was pretty sick and spent a lot of time alone with newspapers and magazines," Long-Sharp said. "The concept of fame was very interesting to him."

 

Warhol later became famous for his works of Marylin Monroe, Liz Taylor and Elvis Presley. The drawings that will be displayed at the Long-Sharp Gallery were precursors to his more famous works but show that even in the early days, he was fascinated with popular, but also avant-garde, culture.

"In this exhibition we present twenty-three ink portraits and figures from the mid-1950's," the introduction to the exhibit's catalogue reads. "In so doing, we celebrate Warhol's tenacity, his artistry, and his vision of finding beauty in everyone."