‘Early Andy Warhol’ is a four week exhibition held in PXL Mad (Media, Arts, Design), an art college in Hasselt, Belgium. Mid January I received a message from famed art curator Luk Lambrecht, if I was interested to participate in the expo, by lending record covers, books and magazines from the 1950ies. Warhol’s professional work as an illustrator, that would be shown in contrast with 30 original Warhol drawings out of that era, from another Belgian collector. Of course I agreed. On February 13 the show opened, crazy fast, but the result is really fab.

The 30 drawings, never before shown in Europe, make it clear that Warhol wasn’t just a commercial illustrator the first decade he worked in New York, but already an aspiring artist. And a daring artist as such. Hundreds of stylish portrait drawings of male friends and lovers, posing nude, had been kept private. The New York galeries were afraid to show them, as homosexuality in the 1950ies was still considered to be criminal behaviour.

The collection of drawings in PXL Mad shows a selection of the nude portraits, and beautiful ink drawings of men in drag (fashion photographer Otto Fenn, among others). But also other work (A cat, mourning women, playing children) in Warhol’s famed blotted line technique.

The commercial work for record companies and magazine publishers, which made Warhol plenty of money and graphic design awards at a young age, was of course less controversial. But it is nice to see similarities in development of style and techniques, as the blotted line and the use of ink stamps, early methods of printing and reproduction, predating the pop art and silkscreening.

Great to see all this in the exhibition hall of an art college, not unlike Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh where Warhol had studied.