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The Shadow (FS.II.269A), 1981
Price on Request
Details
Medium: unqiue screenprint on Lenox Museum Board
Year: 1981
Edition: 32
Sheet size: 38 x 38"
Image size: 38 x 38"
Framed size: 47.25 x 47.25"
Signature: signed by the executor of the Estate of Andy Warhol 'Fredrick Hughes'
Year: 1981
Edition: 32
Sheet size: 38 x 38"
Image size: 38 x 38"
Framed size: 47.25 x 47.25"
Signature: signed by the executor of the Estate of Andy Warhol 'Fredrick Hughes'
About the Work
"The Shadow (FS.II.269A)" is a unique screenprint on Lenox Museum Board created by Andy Warhol in 1981. From the edition of 32, the artwork is signed by the executor of the Estate of Andy Warhol 'Fredrick Hughes' on verso. The artwork is framed in a custom, closed-corner, gold leaf frame and has a framed size of 47.25 x 47.25". The artwork ships framed and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Andy Warhol’s "The Shadow (FS.II.269A), 1981," is a distinctive and unusually intimate variation on one of the artist’s most elusive self-images. Related to, but separate from, the version included in the Myths portfolio, this print presents Warhol as both himself and as “The Shadow,” the mysterious pulp and radio crime fighter whose identity was built on concealment, disguise, and projection.
The image is stark and atmospheric. Warhol’s face, partly visible in profile, is divided between presence and darkness. His glasses and the shock of hair identify him clearly, while the deep silhouette at left creates a second figure, almost detached from the person casting it. The result is not a straightforward portrait, but an image of doubling: Warhol and his shadow, artist and persona, public image and private self.
This version is especially important because it differs from the Myths portfolio print, where Warhol appears without glasses. In FS.II.269A, the glasses make the self-portrait aspect more explicit, strengthening the sense that Warhol is not merely adopting a fictional character but using that character to examine his own image. The print becomes a meditation on identity as something constructed, obscured, and performed.
The small edition size adds to the work’s appeal. FS.II.269A was produced in an edition of only 32 unique color variants, each with its own tonal character. While some impressions introduce stronger color, this example’s restrained gray and black palette is especially effective. It gives the work a photographic, almost film-noir atmosphere, closer to a ghosted publicity still or double exposure than to Warhol’s brighter Pop imagery. The subdued palette supports the subject: shadow, secrecy, memory, and impermanence.
"The Shadow" also fits within Warhol’s larger self-portrait tradition. Throughout his career, Warhol carefully managed his public persona, often appearing as both celebrity and observer, surface and mask. Here, that duality becomes literal. The shadow seems to have its own presence, raising the question of which image is more enduring: the living person, fleeting as a shadow on the wall, or the printed image that survives beyond him.
"The Shadow" offers a quieter but highly resonant Warhol. It is not the artist at his most decorative or commercial, but at his most psychologically suggestive. In this compact group of unique variants, Warhol turns a childhood figure of popular entertainment into a layered image of selfhood, disguise, mortality, and the strange afterlife of images.
About the Artist
The Shadow (FS.II.269A), 1981
Regular price
$265,000.00
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