ANDY WARHOL, VITO GIALLO, NATHAN GLUCK AND THE LOFT GALLERY
back to 1954: ANDY WARHOL EXHIBITS AT THE LOFT GALLERY
Vito Giallo worked for the graphic designer, Jack Wolfgang Beck, who had a long loft studio on the top of a five floor walk-up at East 49th Street between First and York. The loft was so big that they were able to start an art gallery, calling it the Loft Gallery. Beck paid the rent and Vito ran the gallery.
Jack, Vito, Nathan Gluck and his friend Clint Hamilton showed work at the gallery - all of whom were illustrators wanting to be fine artists. It was Nathan's idea to also exhibit Andy's work. (UW19) Warhol exhibited at the gallery three times in small group shows in 1954. (L&D502)
Vito Giallo described Warhol's first show at the Loft Gallery as pen and ink line drawings, "all simple, all outlines. They were just pinned up to the wall, about eight by ten inches, nothing framed at all. He used this blotting technique... We would take a piece of paper, generally Strathmore, fold it in half, and then Andy would do his pencil drawing on the left half of the paper. Next he'd take the pen and just go over it and get a perfect registration. And then you could vary the blotting, the heaviness of the line; the more ink you put on the line, the harder you press down on the pen, the heavier the line. So he had a lot of control over it actually... So when I finished the blotting, he'd sign the resulting print. He'd throw the original away in the middle of the floor where there were piles of drawings; just piles and piles. He never stopped." (Ibid)
Warhol's second show at the Loft Gallery is sometimes referred to as his Origami show, although according to Giallo, Andy "didn't call it Origami at all. But that's the best description of it. He would start with a square piece of paper. He would take the paper, and then he would fold it, and somehow he got a lot of pyramids out of it. Then he would open it up one way or another, and some pyramids would be sticking out. Next, he would do drawings of heads and people on parts of the pyramids, and he did a lot of marbleizing, oil on water. Finally he'd hang them up so that they were sticking out from the wall. We used push pins to hang them up, and they kept falling down; I must have picked those pieces up a hundred times. I think he threw them all out. He never sold anything at the gallery. Very few of us did. But I know nobody even looked at this show... It was his turn to do a one-man show, and I thought it would be drawings and paintings, something straightforward. And then when these things came in I was just shocked." (UW22)
According to Nathan Gluck, another assistant of Andy's in the fifties, it was Gluck who actually taught Warhol how to marbleize paper: "All you do is sprinkle thinned-out oil paint on water and then lay paper down on top of it or simply immerse it... except when you want a very definite pattern, you use a solvent that can hold the pattern... Andy did these strange marbled things, and then he crumpled them up and just left them around on the floor." Gluck thought that Warhol did this on purpose as an installation, whereas Giallo thought it was the result of the push pins they used to hang them on the wall. It may be that Gluck simply confused this exhibit with the previous one using the blotting technique. In reference to the blotting technique, Gluck thought it was "basically a forerunner of silkscreen - in other words, he [Andy Warhol] moved from one kind of a multiple to a more professional kind of multiple." (UW31)
Andy Warhol's third show at the Loft Gallery were drawings of the dancer, John Butler. Although John Butler did attend the exhibit, "nobody else did" according to Vito Giallo.
Warhol convinced Giallo to try freelance work so Vito left the gallery (which closed down) and began to assist Warhol in 1958. He'd arrive at Andy's railroad flat on the top floor on 34th Street and Lexington at 9:00 a.m. and Andy would already have been up for hours.
Vito Giallo:
"Andy said Bricktop used to perform downstairs in a nightclub in the same building. She was a black high-society darling. She had an incredible voice and sang things from the '20s through the early '60s... I would always use the drafting table; Andy hardly ever used the table. He just sat in a chair and crossed his legs with a pad, watching TV at the same time and eating Campbell's tomato soup. I think that's really why he chose that image - tomato soup was his favorite. He always had soup for lunch. His mother was there to make soup and a sandwich. Lettuce, tomato sandwiches, very simple." (UW20)
back to 1954: ANDY WARHOL EXHIBITS AT THE LOFT GALLERY