Title: Camouflage Complete Portfolio
Medium: Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board.
Year: 1987
Size: 38” x 38”
Details: Edition of 80, 3 PP, 1 EP, 84 individual TP not in portfolios, signed and numbered in pencil on verso by the executor of The Estate of Andy Warhol on a stamped certificate of authenticity. Portfolio of 8.
The Camouflage Complete Portfolio was printed in 1987 by Rupert Jasen Smith, New York. Camouflage is a portfolio of eight screenprints on Lenox Museum Board, they are signed and numbered in pencil on verso by the executor of The Estate of Andy Warhol on a stamped certificate of authenticity. The colors are not accurately reproduced since they are fluorescent. The screenprints included in this suite are FS II.406 through FS II.413.
The Camouflage Complete Portfolio was the final group of screenprints published before Andy Warhol’s death the same year. While still alive, Warhol had the opportunity to exhibit the Camouflage screenprints only once at a group show in New York, 1986. The pop artist was inspired to create the Camouflage Complete Portfolio after his assistant, Jay Shriver, shared with Warhol that he was working on abstract paintings by pushing paint through the mesh of the military cloth. Warhol had Shriver go to the local New York army surplus store near Union Station to buy some camouflage fabric. Once Shriver had returned with the fabric, it was then photographed and the mesh was removed to only reveal the shapes and patterns of the fabric. Changing the originally muted militaristic color scheme to vivid pop colors, Warhol appropriated the composition of camouflage into striking abstract pieces of pop art. When Warhol died, the Camouflage portfolio was printed, and he was not given the opportunity to sign them.
