The Andy Warhol painting that put him at odds with Donald Trump has a new owner

In 1981, six years before his death, Andy Warhol devoted the spring to a limited series of paintings commissioned by Donald Trump. The American tycoon, then 34 years old, asked the artist for paintings inspired by Trump Tower, which was still under construction, to adorn the atrium of his first architectural project, located at 725 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. “New York Skyscrapers stands as a testament to Warhol’s ability to encapsulate the spirit of an era characterized by excess, and it remains a powerful commentary on the pursuit of the American Dream as seen through the lens of one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists,” says the Phillips auction house, which has now sold one of the paintings for $952,500. But Trump did not like it at all. “Mr. Trump was very upset that it wasn’t color-coordinated,” Warhol wrote in his diary on August 5, 1981. So Trump rejected all eight of Warhol’s works and refused to pay him. “They’re going to come down with swatches of material so I can do the paintings to match the pinks and oranges. I think Trump’s sort of cheap, though, I get that feeling,” the artist wrote.

More than four decades later, New York Skyscrapers has achieved the recognition that was denied by the now president-elect of the United States and has been acquired at auction in New York by an anonymous buyer for a price that is more than $250,000 above the maximum estimate. “Some in the art world speculated that a disgruntled Democrat may want to make a political statement by buying it simply to destroy it following Trump’s victory in the presidential election. Others thought a Trump supporter may wish to own a unique piece of memorabilia. There was even a rumour that Trump may try to reclaim the piece and hang it in the White House when he returns in January,” posited The Times. Phillips deputy chairman Robert Manley confirmed that interest in the painting was split: “Some people are politically motivated but some people are Warhol collectors.”

The work in question, in which Warhol portrayed in his own way the iconic skyscraper whose escalator Trump descended when he announced his first run for the White House in 2015, has been in the collection of the Swiss-based gallerist and close friend of Warhol, Bruno Bischofberger, for years. It was prominently displayed in the 2001 exhibition Gems and Skyscrapers at Bischofberger’s gallery in Zurich, Switzerland. Today, two of the eight paintings in the series reside in the permanent collection of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. None of them had been auctioned before.

Trump and Warhol did not resume their relationship after the failed commission. The unlikely pair had been introduced by the art director of Interview magazine, Marc Balet, who was working on choosing the shops that would open inside the atrium of Trump Tower. However, it was the tycoon’s then-wife, Ivana Trump (they were married from 1977 to 1990), who suggested to her husband that he meet with the well-known artist to discuss the possibility of painting the pictures that would be destined to be displayed inside the building. “It was so strange, these people are so rich. They talked about buying a building yesterday for $500 million or something. He’s a butch guy,” the artist wrote in his diary after their first meeting. “Nothing was settled, but I’m going to do some paintings, anyway, and show them to them.”

After the skyscraper was completed in November 1983 and his work had been rejected, Warhol met the Trumps again at a party in New York organized for Roy Cohn, a lawyer and adviser to the business tycoon. In his diaries Warhol describes the tense encounter he had with Ivana, who died in 2022. “Ivana Trump was there and she came over and when she saw me she was embarrassed and she said, ‘Oh, whatever happened to those pictures?’ and I had this speech in my mind of telling her off,” Warhol wrote of the encounter. “She was trying to get away and she did,” he wrote. Years later, Warhol was invited to Trump Tower to judge a cheerleading competition. He accepted, but arrived late to spite Trump.

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