(Pittsburgh 1928–1987 New York)

Cats and Dogs (Broadway). 1976.

Acrylic and serigraph ink on canvas.

Signed and dated on the overlap: Andy Warhol 1976, as well as inscribed on the stretcher: LC 2.

128 × 100.5 cm.

Provenance:
- The Mayor Gallery, London (verso with the label).
- Wiegersma Fine Art, Belgium.
- Purchased from the above in the late 1970s by the present owner, since then private collection Netherlands.

Ausstellungen:
- London 1976, Cats & Dogs. The Mayor Gallery, 29 June - 13 August 1976.
- Zurich 1978, Andy Warhol. Kunsthaus Zürich, 26 May - 30 July 1978, no. 153 (with ill.).

Literature: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York/Prinz, Neil/King-Nero, Sally: The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings and Sculpture late 1974-1976, New York 2014, p. 361, no. 3202 (with colour ill.).

Andy Warhol was without doubt one of the most influential figures in 20th-century art. In turning away from the classical concept of fine art, elevating the everyday and the trivial to the status of art, and placing a high value on commerce, he remains to this day an essential figure in the Pop Art movement.

In the mid-1970s, Warhol created 72 paintings and about 45 drawings of animals. The series started with two drawings of the Cocker Spaniel Ginger, commissioned by the collector Peter Brant as a gift for his wife. Two years later, the series “Cats and Dogs”, initiated by Brant and the British art dealer James Mayor, was presented for the first time in Mayor's gallery in London. The series can be divided into four groups: large portraits of cats and dogs (127 × 101.6 cm each) and small portraits of cats and dogs (81.3 × 66 cm each). Warhol based his paintings primarily on black-and-white photographs of the animals. While the dogs Cuba, Danger, and the two Dachshunds Archie and Amos are pets belonging to his friends, three models, including the cat in the present work, remain unidentified. “Cats and Dogs (Broadway)” is one of only 6 large-format cat paintings. Warhol did portraits of only two cats: Factory and Broadway, the former being a taxidermy specimen.

Broadway, black with white markings, can be identified by the white markings on its nose and a large white diamond-shaped patch that extends below its head and across the top of its chest. In the photo, the crouching body is foreshortened and the tail flicks out to the left. The cat stares slightly to the left with large eyes, alert but wary. Warhol reverses the orientation of the pose in the paintings, cropping the photograph as much as possible to the compact mass of the body and the curled extension of the tail. This creates a vertical format for the composition and the cat fills the entire picture plane. Although the pose is not explicitly active, Broadway is alive to the camera. In a crouched position, the animal's body appears tense, ready to pounce at any moment, quite different from the inert profile of Factory, the stuffed cat. Broadway's colour palette is also more vivid. The cat's white markings and almond-shaped eyes become the vehicle for lively passages in pastel shades: acra violet and cobalt blue merge with the mint green background. Warhol executed the silkscreens in a different colour for each large cat: in the present work, in white.

Warhol's “Cats & Dogs” not only reflects his affection for pets, which already began to emerge in his childhood. Andy also gave them an autonomy of character and removed them from the role of the classic pet. Thus, on Warhol’s canvas the ordinary domestic cat undergoes a metamorphosis into a personality in its ow