Mao Zedong

The Art Institute of Chicago (the USA).

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas.

The series was created as the artist’s reaction to the visit of President Nixon to China. Warhol used a black and white image of Mao from a famous communist publication and painted hundreds of portraits of the totalitarian ruler of various sizes. The most monumental scale is a reflection of the cult of the personality of Mao in his country. At the same time, it was a huge number of Mao’s pictures lined up on the wall that likened the dictator to supermarket products, as if they were Coca-Cola containers, available in small, medium and large sizes. Besides, there are graffiti-like splashes, red blush, blue eye shadows and, most importantly, expressionist strokes on the face of Mao. That is how Warhol used the techniques of modernist art to express signs of personal artistic freedom – the very one that Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution denied.