Andy Warhol – Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) 1967

Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) (1967) is one of the most iconic images in the history of twentieth-century art. Part of the landmark ten-print portfolio published by Factory Additions, New York, this screenprint in colours belongs to the series through which Warhol irrevocably transformed both the face of Marilyn Monroe and the very concept of the portrait. Each work in the portfolio presents the same photographic source — a publicity still from the 1953 film Niagara — recast in a different and deliberately artificial colourway, the face becoming a mask, a commodity, an endlessly reproducible icon of desire and loss.

This impression deploys one of the portfolio's most vivid colour combinations: a turquoise face, golden hair, green shadows, and red lips against a pale lilac ground — a palette that is simultaneously glamorous and unsettling, the beauty of the image inseparable from its artificiality. Printed by Aetna Silkscreen Products Inc. with the technical precision that characterises the finest impressions from this edition, the work achieves the flat, luminous colour saturation that Warhol demanded.

Feldman & Schellmann II.28 is among the most sought-after references in the Warhol catalogue raisonné. The portfolio as a whole has been exhibited and acquired by the world's most significant institutions, and individual impressions appear regularly at the major auction houses — Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips — where they consistently achieve six-figure results. This example is signed with initials in pencil verso, dated, and stamp-numbered, and is in good condition with the signature clearly visible.