The Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) shopping bag was published on the occasion of the 1964 exhibition The American Supermarket at Paul Bianchini Gallery on New York’s East 78th Street. The works of Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol, among others, were presented in a faux supermarket within the gallery, complete with aisles, shelves and a checkout counter; the artworks, including a Warhol Campbell’s Soup Can painting, were displayed among supermarket products both real and plastic, further blurring the lines of art as commodity, commodity as art. As part of the exhibition, both Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein had their artwork transposed to mass-market shopping bags that could be purchased by visitors: Warhol’s with a printed image of his soon-to-be famed Campbell’s Tomato Soup Can, Lichtenstein’s displaying a reproduction of his painting of a turkey as inspired by a newspaper ad.

Anecdotal, autobiographical, abundant and appreciable, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can is a twentieth century icon. Born out of American consumerism of the 1960s, its various iterations have attained an unparalleled degree of recognition, having been produced millions of times in media, supermarkets, and in art. Radically unembellished, the soup cans demonstrate the virtuosity, wit and irreverence that characterizes Warhol’s artistic vision and the essence of Pop.

“I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” 

In the spring of 1962, after seeing Roy Lichtenstein’s exhibition of comic-strip paintings at Leo Castelli Gallery, Warhol solicited advice from friends for new subjects to paint. Campbell’s soup was suggested as something that everybody recognizes, and, in a flash of inspiration, Warhol bought cans of soup and began tracing projections of them. The stencil that would go on to form his iconic Soup Can compositions was made by projecting a photograph taken by Warhol’s close companion, the photographer Edward Wallowitch. Taking the directness of photography and melding it with fine art, Warhol harnessed the straight-edge, undeviating nature of mechanical photo-reproduction to make his Soup Cans appear as plain and impersonal as possible.

In creating his Soup Can works, the medium of screenprint enabled Warhol to use repetitive forms more quickly and effectively – a method coincidentally used in the production of food packaging. The process completely refrains from spontaneity and removes artistic intervention, abandoning the role of artist as author. Warhol built on the radical principles of Marcel Duchamp, who in turn challenged the critical apparatus of “high art” with his readymades. Elevating the inconspicuous every day to something as worthy as other post-war American subjects, Warhol presented his Soup Cans hundreds at a time. Their uninterrupted uniformity, lined up together like soldiers, battled the ideology of Abstract Expressionists who leant into pre-lingual gesturalism channeled directly from the artist’s psyche. As Warhol stated, “Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second – comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles – all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.”

 

 

Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato)

Medium: Screenprint on shopping bag
Date: 1964
Image: 6 x 3 1/4 inches (15.2 x 8.2 cm)
Bag: 19 1/4 x 17 inches (48.9 x 43.2 cm)
Edition: Approximately 300
Publisher: Bianchini Gallery, New-York
Printer: Unknown
Literature: Feldman & Schellmann II.4

Published for the American Supermarket exhibition at the Bianchini Gallery, New York from 6 October – 7 November 1964.

Signed in ball-point pen on verso
Some initialed below the image on right

Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato)

Medium: Screenprint on shopping bag
Date: 1964
Image: 16 x 9 1/8 inches (40.6 x 23.2 cm)
Bag: 19 1/4 x 17 inches (48.9 x 43.2 cm)
Edition: Unknown size with an unknown number signed
Publisher: Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachussets
Printer: Unknown
Literature: Feldman & Schellmann II.4A

Published for a Warhol exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachussets, October 1 – November 6, 1966

 

 

Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato), 1964

Phillips New-York: 21 October 2025
Estimated: USD 6,000 – 9,000
USD 8,385

ANDY WARHOL
Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) (F. & S. 4), 1964
Screenprint in colors on wove paper shopping bag
Signed with initials, dated and inscribed ‘To Leo with Love’ in ink (faded)
Published by Bianchini Gallery, New York
Inscribed loving to famed New York art dealer Leo Castelli, this example of the printed shopping bag Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) was gifted by the dealer to prolific collector Leon Kraushar, who owned one of the greatest collections of Pop of his time. Kraushar was a long-time client and friend of Castelli’s, having purchased many iconic Pop works from his gallery; three masterpiece Warhol canvases which Kraushar purchased from Castelli, Orange Marilyn, Green Liz and Red Jackie were famously publicized in a 1965 Life magazine spread entitled ‘You Bought It, Now Live with It’, with the trio hanging above a bed in his Long Island house, Kraushar himself posed below them lounging in a red robe as he talked on the phone; his family and home eventually featured in numerous publications about Pop art, highlighting his role in legitimizing the movement through his collection. This provenance from the late Kraushar, along with the inscription to Castelli, marks Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) as a memento of two of Pop art’s most ardent and earliest believers.
LA Modern: 10 January 2024
Estimated: USD 5,000 – 7,000
USD 7,560

ANDY WARHOL (1928–1987)
Campbell’s Soup shopping bag, 1964
Screenprint in colors on paper bag
Signed, dated and inscribed to upper left ‘To B.A. A.W. 64’
From the approximate edition of 300 

 

Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato), 1966

Doyle New-York: 23 October 2025
Estimated: USD 2,000 – 3,000
USD 2,176

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
CAMPBELL’S SOUP CAN (TOMATO) (FELDMAN/SCHELLMAN II.4A), 1966
Color screenprint on shopping bag
From the edition of unknown size
Published for a Warhol exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Rago: 15 October 2025
Estimated: USD 2,000 – 3,000
USD 3,810
Screenprint in colors on shopping bag
From the edition of unknown size

Freeman’s Hindman: 26 September 2025
Estimated: USD 1,000 – 1,500
USD 3,520

ANDY WARHOL (American, 1928-1987)
Campbell’s Soup Can On Shopping Bag (Tomato), 1966
Screenprint on paper shopping bag
Unsigned as issued

LA Modern: 13 May 2025
Estimated: USD 2,000 – 3,000
USD 6,350

ANDY WARHOL (1928–1987)
Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) (Feldman/Schellmann II.4), 1966
Screenprint in colors on paper shopping bag
This work is from the edition of unknown size