Andy Warhol Marilyn at Leo Castelli (Large), signed and inscribed to Jon Gould

Andy Warhol

Marilyn at Leo Castelli (Large), signed and inscribed to Jon Gould

Large Color offset lithograph invitation on Leo Castelli Gallery announcement Card. Hand signed and inscribed by Andy Warhol to his last boyfriend Jon Gould

Provenance: Acquired from the Estate of Jon Gould

Boldly signed in black marker by Andy Warhol and inscribed to Jon

Frame included

Measurements:
Framed
22.25 inches vertical by 22.25 inches by 1.75 inches
Invitation
12 inches by 12 inches
An extraordinary and well documented piece of Pop Art and Warhol history! If you saw "The Andy Warhol Diaries" on Netflix, you'd know about Warhol's relationship with Jon Gould - Andy's last boyfriend; tragically, Warhol would become the 33 year old Gould's last boyfriend as well.
This is the rare and more elusive 12" Marilyn invitation published by Leo Castelli Gallery. This work is from an edition published by Colour
Editions, Inc. This invitation was created for the
exhibition Andy Warhol: A Print Retrospective
1963-1981 held at Castelli Graphics, New York,
21 November - 22 December 1981
This was personally dedicated by Andy Warhol to very last boyfriend Jon Gould (featured prominently in Andy Warhol's Diaries and the eponymous Netflix series) and it had not been seen since the 1980s. In addition to being one of the rarer large Marilyns, Warhol's signature and inscription is unconditionally guaranteed authentic, as it was acquired directly from the sale of Jon Gould's estate; the provenance is impeccable. (Many of the lesser priced signed Warhol Marilyn Castelli invitations have no provenance at all; this is unconditionally guaranteed authentic.)
Jon Gould was a New England educated former Vice President of Corporate Communications at Paramount Pictures - a Boston Brahmin - but whose real claim to fame was as Andy Warhol's last boyfriend. This work was acquired from the widely publicized sale of the collection of Jon Gould - -a treasure trove of valuable gifts and art works by Warhol and others to Gould - that had not been seen in nearly four decades. This is one of the works from that impressive sale. Below are links to two of the many articles about the collection of Jon Gould in the New York Times and Artnet News respectively.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/arts/design/at-auction-unknown-warhol-sculpture-that-was-gift-to-boyfriend.html
https://news.artnet.com/market/warhol-john-mcinnes-auction-1162280
https://nypost.com/2022/03/09/the-andy-warhol-diaries-reveals-artists-secret-love-life/
MORE ABOUT JON GOULD:
Warhol wrote extensively on Jon Gould in his diaries. In July, 2022, when the Netflix series "The Andy Warhols Diaries" came out, the New York Post (among many other publications) ran a major feature article on Warhol's relationship with Gould and on this very sale: It reads,
"When Harriet Woodsom Gould died in 2016 in her nineties, she left behind a trove of family heirlooms dating back to the 1700s in her Amesbury, Mass., home. Yet in her attic, she had a secret veritable shrine to pop art. There, she had stashed her late son Jon Gould’s belongings for decades since his death in 1986 from AIDS. He had vases painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat, works by Keith Haring and dozens and dozens of gifts — photos, valentines, sketches, letters and more — from pop god Andy Warhol. “My mother kept everything,” Jon’s twin brother, Jay Gould, told The Post. Jay knew his brother “had some type of relationship” with Warhol in the 1980s, though Jon always remained discreet about it. “We were very close, identical twins, but we never talked a lot about his sexuality,” Jay, now 68, explained. “It was a different time.” Yet, he was still stunned to read the poetry and love notes Jon wrote to the older artist. “I didn’t realize the relationship was as deep as it was.” Actually, no one really knew. Gould was Warhol’s last romance, a young Paramount executive with floppy hair and preppy good looks who died tragically at 33. And though Warhol frequently mentioned him in his famed diaries, published posthumously in 1989, the artist’s dashed-off musings gave the impression that Jon was more of a crush than a genuine partner...Gould didn’t so much enter into Warhol’s life as Warhol willed him into it. It was April 1981, and Warhol, then 52, was still reeling from his breakup with Jed Johnson...Jed left that December, and that spring Warhol confessed to feeling lonely: “I’ve got these desperate feelings that nothing means anything. And then I decide that I should try to fall in love, and that’s what I’m doing now with Jon Gould.” Gould was a 26-year-old Paramount exec: a New England WASP with a lithe, strong physique and charismatic personality, who looked straight. Warhol reasoned: “Jon is a good person to be in love with because he has his own career, and I can develop movie ideas with him, you know? And maybe he can even convince Paramount to advertise in Interview, too. Right? So my crush on him will be good for business.” Warhol began courting Gould with a vengeance, sending extravagant bouquets of roses to his office at Paramount. He even offered their mutual friend, the photographer Christopher Makos, a fancy watch if he could get Gould to be his boyfriend. “I guess he never got loved,” Makos says in the series. “Because I didn’t get my watch.” (Jay Gould also tells the camera that his brother had admitted that he was in a relationship but that he said they didn’t have sex.)
At first, Gould resisted Warhol’s attention, but eventually the two began spending a lot of time together, though Gould would frequently pull away if things got too intense, and he often would tell Warhol not to write about him in his diary. “I think my brother was concerned about his career at that time,” Jay Gould said. But the younger man attended parties and art events with him, invited the artist skiing with his family in Aspen and even for a time moved into his place on 66th Street.
“I love going out with Jon because it’s like being on a real date,” Warhol wrote early in their relationship. “He’s tall and strong and I feel like he can take care of me.” Yet it turned out that Warhol would have to take care of Gould. On Feb. 4, 1984, Jon was admitted to New York Hospital with pneumonia — though it was understood that he had AIDS. Warhol stayed with him in the hospital every night for the 30 days he was there, despite his fear of hospitals since getting shot and his fear of getting AIDS. (Warhol couldn’t bring himself to talk about Gould’s illness in the diary, but his editor notes that when Gould was released March 7, Warhol instructed his housekeepers to wash Jon’s clothes and dishes “separate from mine.”). Around 1985, Warhol began working on his massive series of 100 works based on Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Jessica Beck, curator at the Warhol Museum in Warhol’s native Pittsburgh, said that the paintings seem to directly reference Gould and the AIDS crisis, particularly the ones with body builder imagery (Gould was a fitness obsessive) and one with a big “C,” a reference to what Warhol called “the gay cancer.”“He had this deep-rooted Catholic faith, this fear and shame, and was deeply terrified of getting AIDS,” Beck told The Post. “When I first started doing research on ‘The Last Supper’ paintings and saw that at the time he was writing so much about Jon Gould, I was taken aback. I was like, ‘Who is he, and why doesn’t anyone talk about him?’”
Gould never saw those paintings. He eventually went to Los Angeles, and died there Sept. 8, 1986. The diary has an editor’s note saying that he was down to 70 pounds and was blind. “He denied even to close friends he had AIDS,” the note concluded. Jay Gould said he was grateful to see the relationship that had to be kept so hidden for so long explained on-screen. “When my brother passed, a lot of magazines put him in the category of hangers-on who took advantage of Andy and that really bothered me,” Jay said. “I knew my brother would want me to [set the record straight]...Jon was larger than life..."
ABOUT WARHOL'S MARILYNS
As a memorial to the late starlet, Andy Warhol created his first portrait of Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Diptych, in the months after the actress tragically passed away in August 1962. Warhol revisited her image five years later, presenting 10 reproductions of the actress in high-contrast hues for his iconic “Marilyn Monroe” suite. Modeled after a publicity image of Monroe from the 1953 film Niagara, the portraits are a quintessential example of Warhol’s obsession with celebrity culture and repetition. The suite also marked a turning point in Warhol’s career as he embraced silkscreen printing—a technique that allowed him to mass produce images of his muses, erasing the imperfections that made them human in the process. Warhol is often credited with making an idol out of Monroe, immortalizing her in youthful beauty for future generations. This is one of more uncommon authentic hand signed vintage Leo Castelli Warhol Marilyn invitations in the larger, more scarce 12.25 square inch size - not the typical promotional 7 inches that come to market. This work was produced as an announcement for the "Warhol: A Print Retrospective, 1963-1981" exhibition held at Castelli Graphics, New York, 21 November - 22 December, 1981. This invitation was based on the artist's eponymous suite of screenprints from 1967. See Feldman 22-31. Signed boldly in black marker by Andy Warhol. The work is elegantly floated with beveled edges, and framed with museum UV plexiglass. Ready to hang