Big Electric Chair

1963–1968

Warhol the filmmaker: hundreds of reels

From 1963 to 1968 Warhol shot several hundred reels: 472 four-minute portrait Screen Tests, dozens of short films and more than 150 narrative films, only 60 of which were ever released.

1965

Paris: announcing his retirement from painting

The second Flowers series was shown at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris; during the trip Warhol announced that he was retiring from painting to focus on film, saying he no longer believed in painting.

1965

First solo museum exhibition

Warhol's first solo museum exhibition was held in October 1965 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

1966

Manager of The Velvet Underground

In 1966 Warhol began managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and let them rehearse at the Factory; he also financed their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967).

1968

Moderna Museet exhibition and the “Electric Chairs”

By then Warhol had largely stopped painting, but he soon resumed and produced the Big Electric Chair paintings for his 1968 exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

3 June 1968

The shooting at the Factory

The writer Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, who had appeared in his film I, a Man, shot Warhol and the art critic Mario Amaya; Amaya was lightly injured, while Warhol was seriously wounded and spent nearly two months in hospital. Solanas turned herself in to the police a few hours later, saying that Warhol had too much control over her life.