This week Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam received more than ten new photography works by Andy Warhol. It was a donation from the Andy Warhol Foundation with as highlight eight ‘stitched photographs’.

In honor of their twenty-five years of existence the Andy Warhol Foundation decided to donate various works of the artist to the Stedelijk Museum. The foundation, which was established after Warhols death in 1987, has the mission to advance visual art. This according to Warhol’s will.

The donation concerns amongst other things five separate photographs and four Little Red Books. The Little Red Books are series of polaroids composed by Warhol that he used as source material for his  serigraphs. And best of all: eight ‘stitched photographs’. These are several identical images stitched together which Warhol made about five hundred of in total. The curators of the Stedelijk Museum are very pleased with the addition to their collection especially because they didn’t receive photographs of Warhol before. The works correspond well with the serigraphs and the recent exhibition about film from Warhol.

Repetition is a well known custom in Warhol’s work but in 1970 he tried this on actual photographs for the first time. He let his assistants sew the photographs together which resulted in bubbly and according to photography curator Anne Ruygt: ‘almost sculptural works’. Also director Betrix Ruf is excited about the new pieces: “The works give a unique insight into what role photography played in Warhol’s life.”

A month after the exposition of stitched photograps, Warhol suddenly past away. A pile of photographs was found next to the sewing machine in the factory, ready to be finished. After they where concluded, the works where donated to different kinds of institutions. Stedelijk Museum was one of the lucky ones, the works are shown in the museum right now.