Andy Warhol’s Cologne Cathedral 364 is part of hisCologne Cathedral series of four prints featuring the Roman Catholic Church located in Cologne, Germany. Although construction completion took centuries, the structure held significant intrinsic value and demonstrated the ubiquity of Christian traditions in medieval and modern Europe. To bring more attention to the grandeur and beauty of the Gothic architecture, Warhol created prints in Pop color. This specific print primarily had a darker color; however, to add embellishment, Warhol used diamond dust. This fourth and final print of the Cologne Cathedral series contrasts from the three brightly colored prints.
Cologne Cathedral 364 by Andy Warhol as Part of His Larger Body of Work
Cologne Cathedral serves as Germany’s most visited landmark and houses the reliquary of the Three Kings. Warhol wanted to reproduce their structural beauty from a contemporary Pop perspective so as to give it new meaning. Taking such a religious subject for his prints was a turn in his usual pattern of working with the American pop culture. The Cologne Cathedral suite uses both color and line work to obscure and abstract the original image, making it almost unrecognizable as the cathedral and giving it an originality that is not typically seen in artistic renditions of Gothic architecture. The Cologne Cathedral complete portfolio is comprised of four screenprints with diamond dust on Lenox Museum Board, including FS II. 361-364.
Photo credit: View of Cologne Cathedral, Germany.
