"Andy Warhol. Triple Elvis" exhibition in Naples

The Gallerie d’Italia in Naples is hosting the exhibition “Andy Warhol. Triple Elvis”, which presents a nucleus of works by the artist from the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection, an important collection of contemporary art built up between the 1960s and the 1980s and brought together, thanks to the legacy of Cavalier Luigi Agrati, in the historical-artistic heritage protected and exhibited by Intesa Sanpaolo.

The exhibition intends to retrace the original and extraordinary artistic research of Andy Warhol, a leading figure in pop art, starting with Triple Elvis, a famous work dedicated to Elvis Presley in 1963, the year in which the artist first worked on the repetition of the image for the exhibition dedicated to the “Elvis Paintings” at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. It was precisely in those years that Warhol began to include characters in his works that he himself, ahead of his time, qualified as “famous”.

The exhibition displays the evolution of the American artist in the 1960s and very early 1970s through three important graphic cycles exhibited here together for the first time: Marilyn, Mao Tse-Tung and Electric Chairs. It also features a portrait of Warhol: a small, delicate work by American photographer Duane Michals, in which the artist appears and disappears. This sophisticated show is completed by the two Vesuvius from the Intesa Sanpaolo collection, testifying to the important link that the artist had not only with Italy but especially with the city of Naples, thanks also to prominent personalities such as Lucio Amelio, who involved him in a series of exhibitions that were fundamental to the city's history.