Andy Warhol paints Birmingham Race Riots

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MAY - JUNE 1963: ANDY WARHOL PAINTS RACE RIOTS.

From the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné (Vol. 1):

"On May 3-5, 1963, civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, were attacked by police with dogs and high-powered fire hoses. On May 17, three photographs of the demonstrations taken by Charles Moore were reproduced as a double-page spread in Life. Warhol mobilizes the same graphic principles as Life's designers did... Such stylistic devices help to situate the paintings in early 1963. Given the terminus a quo of the publication date of the magazine, May - June 1963 seems a plausible date. It is likely that Warhol conceived of these works in relation to the paintings he was preparing for his show at Sonnabend Gallery in Paris... Catalogue number 421 was included in the Paris exhibition... published as Pink Race Riot. In 1965, the ICA, Philadelphia, published cat. no. 422 [Mustard Race Riot] as Selma, a more neutral if inaccurate title..." (RN380)

Other Race Riot paintings - titled  Little Race Riots by Rainer Crone in the 1970 catalogue raisonné - were done in 1964. 

 

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