Andy Warhol
Lot 170

Andy Warhol

Querelle (cf. F. & S. IIIA.27)

Closed20 March 2013

Price Realised

GBP 25,000

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Andy Warhol
Querelle (cf. F. & S. IIIA.27)
unique screenprint in colours, 1982, on Lenox Museum Board, one of a few unique proofs of this unpublished print, with the artist's copyright stamp and the artist's estate stamp verso (numbered in pencil UP46.05 and initialled VF), the full sheet, a short tear at the upper sheet edge, otherwise in very good condition, framed
I. 820 x 995 mm., S. 1016 x 1020 mm.

Specialist note

For this rare print of two young men in a rather provocative pose Andy Warhol used a photograph taken in preparation of his poster for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film Querelle.
The film is based on Jean Genet's scandalous novel Querelle de Brest, written in 1947 and published only six years later. It is not difficult to imagine that both Fassbinder and Warhol where fascinated by Genet's violent and explicitly homoerotic story of the sailor, opium dealer and murderer Georges Querelle. The film's notoriety was further heightened by Fassbinder's death of a drug overdose and its posthumous release in 1982.
Warhol's screenprints, unique colour variants from an unpublished print run of unknown size thus documents the collaboration of three of the most provocative creative minds of the 20th century: Genet, Fassbinder and Warhol.