Warhol’s Ladies & Gentlemen series stands out in his extensive body of work as one of his most ambitious and commercially successful commissions. Commissioned in 1974 by Italian art dealer Luciano Aselmino, the series eventually grew to include 268 paintings and around 65 drawings and collages. Despite its scale and the representation of over 14 different sitters, Ladies & Gentlemen remains one of Warhol’s lesser-known series, likely because it features subjects from a marginalized subculture that thrived in New York but was rarely seen in mainstream art.

One notable piece from this series is Ladies & Gentlemen (Wilhelmina Ross), a portrait of Wilhelmina Ross, who was originally unnamed. Ross appears to have particularly fascinated Warhol, as she is the subject of 52 Polaroids and 73 paintings in the series. This work, part of Warhol’s exploration of contemporary femininity, resonates with his iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor by capturing a unique expression of gender and identity.

Ross’s identity came to light after a 1997 Gagosian exhibition of the Ladies & Gentlemen series when Jimmy Camicia, founder of the underground drag theater company Hot Peaches, contacted the Warhol Foundation to inform them that the portrait was of Ross, a popular performer in the troupe. Born Douglas Mitchell Hunter in Kansas City, Missouri, Ross chose her name as a blend of the modeling agency Wilhelmina and Warhol’s friend Diana Ross. Warhol famously described drag queens as "living testimony to the way women used to be," capturing their embodiment of idealized femininity and their commitment to preserving a glamorous alternative vision of womanhood.
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Andy Warhol, born in Pittsburgh in 1928, became the leading figure of Pop Art by merging avant-garde aesthetics with commercial culture. After graduating in pictorial design from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, he moved to New York and became one of the most sought-after commercial illustrators of the 1950s. In the 1960s, he shifted to painting and revolutionized the art world with works like the Campbell's Soup Cans series and the Marilyn Diptych, using silkscreen techniques to explore the intersection of consumerism, celebrity, and artistic expression. Warhol’s silkscreens, sculptures replicating supermarket products, and experimental films like Empire and The Chelsea Girls pushed the boundaries of contemporary art by questioning the nature of fame, media, and mass production.

Warhol’s fascination with celebrity culture and materialism earned him a global reputation and countless commissions from socialites and stars. His work, which both critiqued and embraced the commodification of culture, has influenced generations of artists by blurring the lines between high art and popular culture. His provocative statement that “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” reflects his deep understanding of media’s role in shaping public perception. Decades after his death in 1987, Warhol remains a towering figure in contemporary art, with his works housed in major museums worldwide, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and Tate Modern.