In the same way that Jason Pollock and the abstract-impressionist school of art, with their non-linear, non-figurative, highly abstract works, challenged conventional thinking on what art can be, Andy Warhol challenged the abstract-impressionist school. A gifted artist, Warhol began his career as an illustrator with Glamour magazine, while creating independent artworks of his own that got displayed in galleries all over NY, and briefly at the Museum of Modern Art. Warhol’s enduring legacy was in turning away from the noncommercial nature of his art and turning popular household objects into high art.

On this day, July 9, in 1962 Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) opened at the Ferus Gallery, in a one-person exhibition organized by Irving Blum, the gallery director.

Warhol’s exhibition had thirty two portraits of soup cans, all identical except for the flavor inscribed on their labels. They ran in a single line from wall to wall of the gallery, suggesting a grocery shelf, and his drawings gave the cans a soft color arrangement and sleek lines employed by the best Renaissance artists. Warhol’s approach incensed many in the art, and the resulting controversy catapulted him to artistic fame.