Andy Warhol, Chanel No.5, and a Tattooed Lady

Warhol began his career in the advertising world, and he stayed in this realm even as he gained notoriety for his pop-art paintings and silk screens. Advertising was the foundation his career was built upon, and one he never fully outgrew.

We are beyond proud to have several important pieces of Andy Warhol original posters in our collection.

The below Tattooed Woman Holding a Rose is one of the crowning jewels in our gallery. Printed at the beginning of Warhol’s career, this work of art is exceptionally rare. A screen print on Japanese printmaking paper, this fun and elegant piece served as Andy Warhol’s calling card in 1955. The woman’s pin-up silhouette is filled with logos of companies Warhol hoped to work for, and the print would have been rolled up and mailed to advertising agencies around New York City. In the center, we see the artist’s old fashioned NYC phone number and subsequent reference to the Murray Hill neighborhood he lived in at the time.

This early example of Andy Warhol’s mastery of illustration has been stamped by The Andy Warhol Foundation, guaranteeing authenticity.

Tattooed Woman Holding a Rose by Andy Warhol, 1955. Please click on the image to learn more about this rare piece.

Look closer at the above image and you may notice that many of the brands Warhol included as tattoos he later went on to do commercial work for; proof that his style was accepted early on in his career by commercial industries.

One such brand that embraced Warhol’s pop-art sensibility was iconic fashion brand Chanel. Originally released by CoCo Chanel in 1921, Chanel No. 5 was the first blockbuster perfume in history. This series created by Warhol escalated the product even further to become an iconic image. These posters are now part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Only produced in limited-edition quantities by Chanel, these posters have become exceedingly collectible and hard to find.

After selling out of our first batch of these posters within 60 days, we are beyond excited to announce that we have been able to locate a limited quantity just in time for the holidays.