Andy WARHOL (1928-1987) Electric chair Silkscreen on rolled canvas Signed in felt pen on the back of the canvas: "Andy Warhol". Stamped Sunday B Morning and Fill in your own signature 199 x 140.5 cm Provenance - Former Guy De Bruyn collection (friend of Warhol and owner of Galerie D in Brussels) - Private collection, Brussels (family heirloom) In Brussels in the 1970s, Galerie D was the meeting place and hub of the Pop Art scene at the time. Guy De Bruyn was both a witness to and a player in this artistic ferment. At Galerie D, he exhibited works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Jean-Pierre Raynaud met Hergé there in 1974, and Hergé met Warhol in 1977. Guy De Bruyn was the man who brought them together and distributed their art in Brussels. We know that he played a certain role in the Sunday B. Morning, which published Warhol's serigraphs from the end of the 1960s onwards and which were widely distributed, spreading the Pop spirit and philosophy and questioning art and artistic authorship more generally. These questions and reflections on art in our consumerist society are still relevant today. Warhol's iconic Electric Chair is considered his most political work, and perhaps also one of his darkest. The artist tackled the subject of the death penalty as early as 1963. In the 1960s, the subject was the subject of debate and unrest in America, with an increase in the crime rate and the number of executions. The country was divided on the streets and within its institutions over the issue of capital punishment, and some states took the opportunity to abolish it at that time. Warhol seized on this hotly debated topic and treated it for years as he would any other pop-culture subject. Since Guy De Bruyn's death, this piece has been kept by his family in Brussels.