Flowers (Hand-Colored) 112 by Andy Warhol is one of ten hand-colored screenprints from the artist’s 1974 Hand-Colored Flowers portfolio. The print shows a delicate sunflower in a tall pink vase, drawn with Warhol’s characteristic clean outlines and tinted with soft watercolor hues. Shades of yellow and brown animate the flower’s textured head, while fine black lines define its fragile stem and wilted leaves. The composition feels both elegant and restrained, blending illustration with a painter’s sensibility.
Printed by Alexander Heinrici, the Hand-Colored Flowers portfolio follows Warhol’s Black and White Flowers series from the same year. Both collections draw inspiration from a 1950s wallpaper catalog titled Interpretive Flower Designs. For Flowers (Hand-Colored), Warhol reused the same traced outlines from the earlier portfolio but invited assistants to apply translucent watercolor dyes—specifically Dr. Martin’s aniline inks—by hand. As the colors drift outside the lines, they create a sense of looseness and movement that softens the precision of the print.
A Return to Warhol’s Illustrative Roots
Works like Flowers (Hand-Colored) 112 mark a departure from Warhol’s mechanical Pop Art aesthetic. Instead of bold repetition and saturated color, this series recalls the charm of his 1950s fashion illustrations. The fluid ink lines carry personality and grace. Warhol’s early years as a commercial artist for shoe and accessory advertisements taught him to appreciate the expressive potential of contour and shading. In this series, he revisits that sensibility—yet with a mature understanding of form and restraint.
The print also reflects Warhol’s ongoing fascination with process. While he often used silkscreen techniques to distance himself from the artist’s hand, here he reintroduces touch and texture. Each piece in the series is slightly different, giving the collection a handcrafted quality rarely seen in his printed work. Consequently, this contrast between repetition and individuality highlights one of Warhol’s central concerns. He explored the tension between art as product and art as gesture.
Today, Flowers (Hand-Colored) 112 stands out as a moment of quiet reflection within Warhol’s prolific career. The work bridges the commercial polish of his Pop Art era and the delicate introspection that defined his later portfolios. It reminds viewers that even amid his fascination with fame and mass culture, Warhol never stopped searching for beauty in the simplest of forms. A single flower, rendered with care and imperfection, becomes proof of his quieter vision.
Photo credit: Andy Warhol at the opening of his “Flowers” exhibition, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris. Photo by Harry Shunk & János Kender, May 12, 1965.
