“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” (Andy Warhol in, T. Shafrazi, Andy Warhol: Portraits, New York: Phaidon, 2007, p. 17). Warhol’s iconic 40 x 40 inch portraits from the mid-1980s collate to provide a glamourized yearbook of socialites, friends, dealers and tycoons; the collection of portraits ultimately comprises a rolodex of the icons of the late 20th century. Through his crisp screens and vibrant palette, Warhol renders each seemingly recognizable face into a fresh and dazzling portrait. Each sitter, regardless of their prominence or popularity, is submitted to Warhol’s process; his process of transformation, production and idealization.

In the present lot, Cindy Pritzker, wife of Jay Pritzker, founder of the Hyatt hotel chain, is portrayed in a light untouched by the photographic truth of which her image originates. Her depiction is ageless; a Barbielike beauty bedecked in the perfect wet inks of Warhol’s technique. Her eyes are delicately painted with crystal blue pigments, contrasting greatly with the bright red inks that comprise her ever slight smile. Her coifure is rendered in a perfect buttercup yellow, almost blending with the creamy backdrop which she stands before. Warhol removes the sort of facets that provide a photograph with its absolute integrity; suppressing, extracting, and standardizing Mrs. Pritzker’s head shot into a graphic surface of forceful individuality. “His portraits transformed aging socialites into Venus de Milos, and their industrialist husbands into Florentine Davids—or at least, into Hollywood facsimiles thereof…” (Bob Colacello in, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, New York: Harper Collins, 1990, p. 89).