Pontus Hultén and the Quest to Bring Andy Warhol’s Pop Art to the Moderna Museet during the Cold War

Abstract

Today, Andy Warhol is recognized as one of the best-selling twentieth-century artists in the world. But how did he move from an artist of only American interest to the most expensive Pop Art star on the international scene? The current paper argues that legendary Swedish art curator Pontus Hultén played a crucial role in the international promotion of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art during the early years of the Cultural Cold War. Despite the profound influence of the contemporaries Andy Warhol and Pontus Hultén on twentieth-century art history, the connection between the American Pop artist and the legendary Swedish curator has been insufficiently explored in academia. Based on the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum Archives in Pittsburgh, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in Washington D.C., and the Centre Pompidou Archives in Paris, this paper reveals how and why Hultén exhibited Warhol’s Pop Art in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, by first including his works in the American Pop Art group show in 1964 and later organizing the Andy Warhol retrospective in 1968.

Keywords

• american pop art
• andy warhol
• moderna museet
• pontus hultén
• sweden
• usa
• cold war