Andy Warhol | Happy Greta Garbo Day

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) — Happy Greta Garbo Day

Long before Andy Warhol became the defining image-maker of American Pop Art, he worked through the 1950s as a commercial illustrator in New York. Happy Greta Garbo Day, made circa 1954, belongs to this earlier, far less documented period of his career, more than a decade before he painted Garbo’s Hollywood peers as Pop icons in his celebrity screenprints.

The image itself is reduced to its barest essentials: a faint, almost ghostly outline of a woman’s profile, built from a handful of searching, continuous lines. It is not catalogued in Feldman and Schellmann’s standard reference of Warhol’s prints, and survives only in a small number of impressions — a quietly personal piece from an artist who had not yet become “Warhol.”

Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.

Offset lithograph on wove paper
21.5 × 27 cm (sheet); 49.5 × 55 cm (framed)
Circa 1954, one of a small number of impressions
Not catalogued in Feldman & Schellmann