10 Surprising Facts About My Early Life – By Andy Warhol
Hello, darling. It’s me, Andy Warhol. You probably know me for my Marilyns, my soup cans, my silver wigs. But before all that—before The Factory, before Interview Magazine, before the 15 minutes of fame—I was just a sickly little boy from Pittsburgh, dreaming of Hollywood and drawing pictures in bed.
People think I arrived in New York as this fully-formed pop art sensation. But no, my life before fame was full of little surprises. Some of them were beautiful. Some of them were strange. And all of them shaped the way I saw the world. So let’s go back—before the silkscreens, before the celebrities—back to where it all began.
1. I Was Born Andrew Warhola, the Son of Immigrants
Yes, darling, I wasn’t always Warhol—I was Warhola. Andrew Warhola, born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My parents were immigrants from a tiny village in Slovakia called Miková. They didn’t speak English when they arrived in America. They didn’t come from money. They were simple people who worked hard, saved pennies in coffee cans, and believed in something bigger than themselves.
My father, Ondrej, was a construction worker. My mother, Julia, was an artist in her own way—she made the most beautiful, decorative handwriting and would draw little pictures on everything. Watching her create made me realize art didn’t have to be serious. It could be playful. It could be ordinary. It could be everywhere.
2. I Was a Sickly Child—and That Changed Everything
I was eight years old when I got sick. It started with fevers, tremors, strange blotches on my skin. The doctors said it was Sydenham’s chorea—St. Vitus’ Dance. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? It made my hands shake. My legs move involuntarily. It kept me bedridden for months. And in those months, I became obsessed with movies, magazines, and drawing.
I didn’t have many friends. But I had paper and pencils. I had Clark Gable and Shirley Temple. I had the radio playing Hollywood gossip. I lay there, staring at glossy pictures of glamorous people, and I thought—someday, I want to be where they are. I don’t want to be sick in bed in Pittsburgh. I want to be in New York, making pictures that matter.
3. I Was Terrified of Hospitals and Death
My illness did something to me. It made me obsessed with health, beauty, and avoiding anything that reminded me of death. I hated hospitals. I hated sickness. I hated thinking about things ending. That’s why later in life, I loved repetition. If something repeats over and over, maybe it never dies.
You see it in my Marilyns. In my Elvis paintings. The same face, again and again, as if printing it a thousand times could keep it from fading away.
4. My Mother Was My First Collaborator
Oh, my mother, Julia. She was wonderful. She had this charming way of turning everything into art—cursive writing, hand-drawn angels, little sketches on scraps of paper. She would sit with me and draw when I was sick, and I think that’s when I knew art was what I wanted to do.
Years later, when I moved to New York and started illustrating for magazines, I asked her to write the text for my drawings. Her handwriting was elegant, looping, old-world. It became part of my signature style. She even moved to New York to live with me in the 1950s. We would feed our 25 cats and draw all day long.
5. I Had a Cat Named Hester—Then 25 More
Speaking of cats, I adore them. As a boy, we had a black cat named Hester, and she was my first pet. But in New York, it got out of hand. I had 25 cats at one point. And do you know what I named them? All but one were named Sam. Only one got a different name—Hester, of course.
Why Sam? I liked the repetition. I liked the idea that even though they were all different, they were still the same. Just like my portraits. Just like my art. Identity is funny that way.
6. I Was Obsessed With Shirley Temple and Movie Stars
When I was sick in bed, I fell in love with Hollywood. But not just the movies—I was obsessed with movie stars themselves. Shirley Temple was my favorite. She was everything I wanted to be—famous, loved, perfect in every picture. I wrote to her fan club. I collected glossies of her and any other star I could get my hands on.
Later, when I started making pop art, it wasn’t about creating new things. It was about celebrating what was already famous. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor—they were like saints in a pop culture religion. And I was painting their icons.
7. I Was the Only Artist in My Blue-Collar Neighborhood
Pittsburgh was not a glamorous place. It was steel mills, soot-covered streets, men who worked hard and didn’t talk about feelings. And then there was me—this shy, pale, sickly boy who loved drawing pictures and idolized Hollywood. I didn’t fit in. I never did.
When I told my classmates I wanted to be an artist, they laughed. Art wasn’t something you did for a living. It was a hobby. Something rich people did. But I wasn’t interested in steel mills or factories. I wanted to be in a different kind of factory—one where we made ideas, images, and personalities.
8. My Father Believed in Me Before I Believed in Myself
My father, Ondrej, wasn’t an artist. He didn’t understand the things I drew, but he believed in me. He worked hard his whole life, and before he died, he made sure there was money for me to go to college.
When I got accepted to the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), I was scared. I didn’t know if I was good enough. But my father’s savings sent me there. He believed I was meant for more. And I was.
9. I Worked as a Window Dresser Before I Became Famous
Before the galleries, before the silkscreens, I designed store windows. Bonwit Teller. Tiffany’s. I arranged mannequins and painted glamorous backdrops. It was like designing a movie set, only for real life.
Window dressing was like advertising, like making something ordinary into a spectacle. And that idea never left me. Later, when I made my soup cans or my Coca-Cola paintings, I was still thinking about window displays. About stopping people in their tracks. About making them look.
10. I Changed My Name for Fame
One day in New York, a magazine misprinted my last name. Instead of Warhola, it just said “Andy Warhol.” I liked the way it looked. Shorter. Sharper. More glamorous. So I kept it. I left Warhola behind. And Andy Warhol was born.
It wasn’t just a name change. It was an identity change. A rebranding. And that’s what I did with everything in my life. I took what was there and made it bigger, brighter, more artificial, and somehow more real at the same time.
Final Thoughts: Becoming Andy Warhol
So, darling, that’s the story of how I went from a sickly boy in Pittsburgh to the King of Pop Art. People think I created a whole new kind of art, but really, I just took the world around me and held up a mirror. A shiny, neon-colored, silkscreened mirror.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s what made me famous.
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