Andy Warhol Action Picture, 1986 instantly grabs attention with its bright red background and the use of bright yellow linework to delineate the dark shapes of the people and horses they ride upon and to suggest their movement. The central figure focuses his attention directly at the viewer as he aims his gun, implicating the viewer into the commotion.

Part of the Cowboys and Indian series, Andy Warhol’s Action Picture, 1986 sources its image from a Charles Schreyvogel painting entitled Breaking Through the Lines, originally inspired by Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Extravaganza. The original painting aimed to capture the excitement that was associated with the Old West, and Warhol’s work does the same, the strong colors and movement invoking that exhilarating sentiment. Andy Warhol’s Action Picture is the only work that features both cowboys and Native Americans together in the Cowboys and Indians series. By showing the two engaged in the kind of action that would have dominated a Western film, this work plays with the romanticized notion of the relationship between the two groups and how that relationship was often portrayed in mass media.

Created in 1986, Andy Warhol’s Action Picture is a color screenprint on Lenox Museum Board and is hand signed in the lower left corner in pencil. It is a unique work of an edition of 36, published by Gaultney, Klineman Art Inc., New York and printed by Rupert Jason Smith, New York.

This screenprint is part of a portfolio of works Warhol created in 1986 titled Cowboys and Indians. Other works in the Cowboys and Indians Series include General Custer, Sitting Bull, Kachina Dolls, Geronimo, Annie Oakley, War Bonnet Indian, Buffalo Nickel, Northwest Coast Mask, Plains Indians Shield, Mother and Child, Indian Head Nickel, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Wayne.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
Andy Warhol Action Picture, from the Cowboys and Indians Series, 1986 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the sale of the work).

1. Feldman, Frayda and Jörg Schellmann. Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962 – 1987, 4^th Ed. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2003.
2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this artwork.

About the Framing:
Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, Andy Warhol Action Picture, from the Cowboys and Indians Series, 1986 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.