Executed in 1983, this portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe is one of only two unique prints on museum board of the subject, with the other example on a red ground. Warhol also executed a painting on canvas based on the same Polaroid image, which can now be found in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate, London.

Printmaking was one of the central mediums in Warhol’s practice - the screenprint enabled him to repeat a photographic source while altering colour, emphasis and registration, producing images that blurred the distinctions between the artist’s hand and mechanical reproduction. His prints therefore occupy a position equally as important as that of painting within his work, embodying his fascination with circulation, celebrity and the transformation of public images through repetition.

In the present work, Mapplethorpe’s face emerges from an intensely luminous silver field, his transfixing gaze directed back at the viewer. Despite the almost abstracted, iconic features of the sitter that are characteristic of Warhol’s portraits, the image projects an intense sense of human presence and intimacy, pointing to the connection and mutual respect between the two artists.

By the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe had established himself as one of the most distinctive photographers of his generation. His meticulously composed portraits, still lifes and studies of the body combined formal precision with an uncompromising exploration of sexuality, desire and subcultural life. Like Warhol, he understood portraiture not simply as a record of appearance, but as a means of constructing identity and controlling how it entered public consciousness. In 1983 they photographed one another – Mapplethorpe’s portraits of Warhol likewise constitute important examples of his photographic practice and can be found in prominent museum collections, notably the Tate and the Guggenheim, among others.