Revisiting the earliest meeting of Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys in 1979, an exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac London brings together a selection of Warhol’s celebrated portraits of Beuys, many of which are shown in the UK for the first time. 

The two giants of art history first encountered one another in person at Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, Germany. ‘For those who witnessed them approaching each other across the polished granite floor, the moment had all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon,’ notes the American writer David Galloway. In November of the same year, the pair met again in New York on the occasion of Beuys’s landmark retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Warhol took a Polaroid photograph of the head and shoulders of the German artist dressed in his signature felt hat and fishing vest. The photograph went on to serve as the source image for a series of screenprinted paintings and prints created by Warhol between 1980 and 1986.