Truck 367 by Andy Warhol is one of four screenprints from the artist’s 1985 Truck Complete Portfolio. The print depicts a modern semi-truck from a low, frontal angle that emphasizes its size and industrial presence. Warhol overlays the vehicle with electric cyan contour lines and vivid orange highlights, while setting it against a brilliant yellow sky and a saturated pink foreground. The gray trailer remains comparatively restrained, creating a striking contrast with the vibrant cab and background. The result transforms a familiar freight vehicle into a bold graphic composition that feels both monumental and unmistakably Pop.
Origins of the Truck Portfolio
The Truck portfolio was commissioned by the International Road Transport Union (IRU) and the Federal Association of German Long-Distance Freight Transport (Bundesverband des Deutschen Güterfernverkehrs) to commemorate the twentieth IRU World Congress. Printed by Rupert Jasen Smith in New York and published by Hermann Wünsche in Bonn, Germany, the series celebrated the importance of international freight transport while reflecting Warhol’s longstanding fascination with industry, commerce, and everyday objects.
Each print in the portfolio uses the same photographic source image yet explores a different chromatic solution. In Truck 367, Warhol pairs a luminous yellow background with vivid pink ground and cool cyan outlines that seem to vibrate around the truck’s silhouette. Rather than depicting transportation realistically, he transforms the vehicle into an icon through simplified forms, saturated color, and crisp screenprinted layers.
Truck 367 by Andy Warhol as Part of His Larger Body of Work
By the 1980s, Warhol had mastered the screenprinting process and continued to push it in new directions with longtime collaborators such as Rupert Jasen Smith. He layered translucent colors, bold outlines, and carefully registered screens to create images that balanced mechanical precision with painterly energy. Although every edition in the Truck portfolio derives from the same composition, each achieves a distinct visual identity through its color relationships. Beyond the numbered edition, Warhol also produced seventy-three unique trial proofs that experimented with alternative colorways.
Truck 367 belongs to a broader group of works that celebrate the visual language of modern industry. Like Campbell’s Soup Cans, Mobil Gas, and Volkswagen (Lemon), it elevates an ordinary commercial object into a work of fine art. At the same time, the portfolio acknowledges the networks of transportation that shaped postwar economies, revealing Warhol’s enduring ability to find beauty, symbolism, and graphic power in the machinery of everyday life.
Photo Credit: Andy Warhol, Mack Truck, Polaroid, 1982. Unique gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 in. Courtesy of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
