Archival Andy Warhol documents donated to the artist’s foundation
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has received a truly generous donation, including a number of Warhol-related archival documents. The Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation, a philanthropic group, is behind the donation.
Amongst the collection of documents are several photographs and records linked to Warhol’s artworks. They had been brought together by Thomas Ammann, a Swiss art dealer and long-term friend of Warhol’s, whom he met when working at the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in the 1970s.
Ammann put together the collection with his sister Doris at his gallery, Thomas Ammann Fine Art. The catalogue’s editor, Neil Printz, said, “Thomas grasped the importance of the catalogue raisonné as a critical record of an artist’s body of work and appreciated its scholarly tradition. He also had the conviction that Warhol, like Picasso and Klee, for example, merited the same sort of scholarship.”
The Swiss art dealer had first considered cataloguing Warhol’s work when he was at the height of his popularity, hoping it would help further cement his status in the art world. Warhol agreed to Ammann’s request that he could keep a scholarly document that would be published in the future.
Warhol and Ammann’s friendship is evident in the fact that Warhol had bought a 35mm Minox spy camera as he wanted one similar to Ammann’s. The camera would later become inextricably linked to his iconic social photographs. Warhol also painted Ammann and took his photograph on a Polaroid.
After Ammann died in 1993, his sister Doris made it her mission to complete the unfinished archive and worked in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation to get it completed. Neil Printz also noted, “The photographs and records of ownership from the past 50 years might otherwise have been lost, but rather have been instrumental in helping to reconstruct the provenance of Warhol’s work.”
