Andy Warhol
Campbell's Soup Can1964

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Painting of a Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup can, centered against an off-white background, with flat graphic style and bold red, white, black, and gold label

Artist or Maker: Andy Warhol
United States, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, 1928–1987, active New York City
Title: Campbell's Soup Can
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1964
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 × 24 in. (91.44 × 60.96 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Robert H. Halff through the Modern and Contemporary Art Council
Accession Number: M.2005.38.12
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans became Pop art icons when they were first exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962. The show featured thirty-two paintings, representing each variety of soup available at that time. Like other Pop artists, Warhol appropriated images and techniques associated with commercial culture—he carefully reproduced the distinctive Campbell’s Soup label to mimic its appearance in supermarkets and advertisements for the product.

Although the subject had popular appeal, it also had a personal association for the artist: when asked why he chose to paint Campbell’s Soup cans, he replied: “I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years.” This painting was commissioned by the Campbell’s Soup Company in 1964 as a gift for their retiring board chairman.

Wall label, 2021.
Selected Bibliography: Zalman, Sandra. Consuming Surrealism in American Culture: Dissident Modernism. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015.
Barron, Stephanie. Acknowledgments, or Every Label Tells a Story. Los Angeles: Art Catalogues: LACMA, 2017.

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