Campbell's Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48 by Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's signature on the back of Campbell's Soup I: Vegetable 48.
Campbell's Soup Cans I: Vegetable Soup in a frame
Campbell's Soup Cans I: Vegetable Soup hanging at Revolver Gallery
vegetable with beef stock soup
GIFT SHOP Campbell’s Soup Cans II Complete Portfolio by Andy Warhol Andy Warhol - Hot Dog Bean F.S. II 59 in situ jpg Andy Warhol Campbell soup II complete portfolio. Andy Warhol printing Campbells Soup Cans Campbell’s Soup Cans II Complete Portfolio Catalog Title: Campbell's Soup Cans II Complete Portfolio (FS II.54-63) Year: 1969 Size: 35" x 23" | 88.9 x 58.4 each Medium: Portfolio of ten screenprints on paper. Edition: Portfolio of 10. Edition of 250 signed in ball-point pen and numbered with a rubber stamp on verso. There are 26 AP signed and lettered A-Z in ball-point pen on verso. Call for Price Text for Price Email for Price The Campbell’s Soup Cans II complete portfolio by Andy Warhol comprises 10 prints of the iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans series. It is his third work rendering the common American pantry item. It follows his breakout thirty-two-piece series, Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), and the 1968 Campbell’s Soup Cans I (1968). The Campbell’s soup label had become high art in Warhol’s series. Moreover, the portfolio reinforced both the brand a pop culture icon, and Warhol’s reputation as the “Prince of Pop Art.” Uniformity and Detail in the Soup Can Prints The Campbell’s Soup Cans II screenprints show a variation of 10 different Campbell’s soup flavors. Each can rest in the center of its frame, where it aligns exactly with the other sets of images. This symmetry and regularity gave the entire portfolio a uniform, mass-produced aesthetic that Warhol aimed for. The cans appear graphic and animated like the labels on the actual soup cans. They also share bold shades of red, yellow, and white with black print lettering that resembles the true Campbell’s style. Warhol decided to include hyper-realistic detailing of shadows and refracting light on the tin lids, making each can slightly unique to its counterpart. The works’ likenesses to one another are further broken with different flavors, slogan designs, and colors. The Campbell’s Soup Cans II complete portfolio expands creatively from Campbell’s Soup I with bolder, brighter colors. The addition of slogans and catchphrases connect viewers to the product, with more versatility with shape and directionality. For example, flavors like Hot Dog Bean, Vegetarian Vegetable, and Tomato-Beef Noodle O’s included playful taglines. Campbell’s Soup Cans II, like the original series, was created via silkscreening. Warhol used silkscreening, a process rooted in advertising for its precise and bold graphics. Warhol repurposed this tool for fine art. Therefore, the portfolio is both an extension of Warhol’s business-art motif and a refinement of his earlier soup can projects. Warhol’s Personal Connection to Campbell’s Soup Campbell’s Soup was a convenient staple in Warhol’s daily life. “I used to drink it,” he famously said. “I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” It was ultimately the perfect image to replicate and produce on a broad scale. However, the very simplicity of the subject invited criticism. Detractors called it too commercial, too repeatable, and too impersonal to be considered high art. As apathetic Campbell’s Soup Cans II may have seemed to some, it questioned the belief that art must be deeply expressive or transcendent. Instead, the Campbell’s Soup Cans II complete portfolio reflected everyday life and recognizable social norms. Ultimately, the Campbell’s Soup Cans II prints and Warhol’s previous soup cans helped to redefine art. By transforming a supermarket staple into a subject for reflection, he forced viewers to reconsider both consumption and creativity. As a result, Warhol’s soup cans defined an era where the conventional and the mundane could become extraordinarily powerful tools (via Pop Art). Campbell’s Soup Cans II Complete Portfolio as Part of Andy Warhol’s Larger Body of Work Warhol’s collection of prints representing Campbell’s soup cans is arguably his most iconic and widely recognized endeavor. The Campbell’s Soup Cans portfolios represent many themes that Warhol continued to work with throughout his career, including the powerful role that mass consumption plays in postwar society. Moreover, the semi-mechanized process he used to create these works is a staple characteristic of his creative process. This series helped to usher in the Pop Art movement that endures today, renewed and rediscovered by artists such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. Photo Credits: Andy Warhol tracing Campbell’s Soup silkscreen, The Factory, New York City, circa 1965. © Estate of Nat Finkelstein. © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London.
Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga make a painting, 1964. Vintage gelatin silver print, 10¼ × 14¾ inches; 26 × 38 cm. Photo by Matthew Marks.

Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48

Catalog Title: Campbell's Soup Cans I: Vegetable (FS II.48)
Year: 1968
Size: 35" x 23" | 88.9 x 58.4 cm.
Medium: Screenprint on paper
Edition: Edition of 250 signed in ballpoint pen and numbered with a rubber stamp on verso. There are 26 AP signed and lettered A - Z in ball-point pen on verso.
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Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48 is a screen print of a single Campbell’s condensed vegetable soup can by Andy Warhol. Warhol presents the familiar red-and-white label with its looping Campbell’s logo, central gold medallion, and bold red “VEGETABLE” text over the words “MADE WITH BEEF STOCK,” all stacked above the black “SOUP” at the base. The can floats against a blank ground, and the flat color, sharp outline, and lack of visible brushwork turn an ordinary pantry item into a crisp commercial icon. The print forms part of Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans I portfolio, one of the most recognizable series in Pop Art.

Historical context of the Campbell’s Soup Cans I Portfolio

Warhol printed the Vegetable 48 soup can in 1968, six years after the original Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings (often called 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans) debuted at his first solo exhibition. The show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles drew both praise and hostility. Many viewers felt shocked that an artist would fill a gallery with what looked like supermarket labels, and the work quickly became a flashpoint in debates about modern art.

Campbell’s Soup Cans and the question of art

Pieces like Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48 gain much of their power from this moment in art history. In the decades before the 1960s, abstract expressionism dominated museums and galleries. Large gestural canvases and existential themes set the standard for “serious” painting. By contrast, walking into a refined gallery and facing a single vegetable soup can felt bewildering, even insulting, to some artists and critics.

Warhol’s soup cans challenged those expectations. They display a commercial image with almost no trace of the artist’s hand and reject the usual painterly drama. Warhol took a risk by presenting an image so plain and standardized, yet that risk defined his career. The prints mattered less for technical virtuosity than for the ideas behind them and the way they questioned what art could be.

Pop philosophy, consumer culture, and legacy

Warhol loved painting mundane objects because he admired their perfection, consistency, and convenience. At the same time, he wanted to test what “counts” as art and how context changes our response. Specifically, an image of a soup can might seem like pure advertising at Campbell’s headquarters or on a billboard. However, when the same image appears in a museum, viewers instinctively search for meaning. With works like Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48, Warhol forced audiences to confront that shift and to look at the manufactured world they had built around themselves.

Consequently, the Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48 print, like much of his work, focuses on industrial and commercial culture as a source of visual interest. This concern resurfaces in portfolios such as Ads, Shoes, and the Truck series.

Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48 in Warhol’s larger body of work

Warhol believed many artists ignored the simple pleasures of modern life. Mass production, brand imagery, and the flood of photographs that defined American society all fascinated him. To Warhol, celebrities, popular products, and even fictional characters belonged to the same universe of fame. As a result, his legacy includes a vast catalogue of pop culture, filled with icons of glamour and everyday consumption. Above all, Campbell’s Soup Cans I: Vegetable 48 stands as a cornerstone of that catalogue. It crystallizes his bold Pop Art style and his most influential ideas about art, commerce, and repetition.

Photo Credits:

  1. Andy Warhol tracing Campbell’s Soup silkscreen, The Factory, New York City, circa 1965 © Estate of Nat Finkelstein © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London
  2. Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga make a painting, 1964. Vintage gelatin silver print, 10¼ × 14¾ inches; 26 × 38 cm. Photo by Matthew Marks.
  3. Andy Warhol, 1964. Vintage gelatin silver print, 10¼ × 14¾ inches; 26 × 38 cm. Photo by Matthew Marks.
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