Andy Warhol Trivia
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56 free Andy Warhol trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Andy Warhol trivia quiz runs from Pittsburgh to Studio 54. It starts with the Rusyn immigrant parents, the childhood illness that kept him in bed with movie magazines, the Carnegie Tech scholarship, the shoe illustrations that made him New York's most in-demand commercial artist, and the drawing MoMA politely declined. Then comes the leap to Pop: the Bonwit Teller window, the $50 tip that led to dollar-bill paintings, the 32 Campbell's Soup Cans in Los Angeles, the Marilyns, the Brillo Boxes and the silver Factory. The second half covers the films and the Velvet Underground, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the 15-minutes remark, Valerie Solanas and the shooting that left him in a surgical corset for life, Interview magazine, the Sticky Fingers zipper, the dachshunds, the Mao and Reigning Queens series, Basquiat, the Amiga portrait of Debbie Harry, the Love Boat cameo, the gallbladder operation and the wig he was buried in, then the museum, the Time Capsules and the record prices. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Salvador Dalí and Banksy quizzes next.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which US city was Andy Warhol born in 1928?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh: a grade-school teacher spotted his talent and arranged Saturday drawing classes for him at the city's Carnegie Institute.
Q 02Warhol's parents came from Miková, a village in what is now which country?
Slovakia
Slovakia: his father left the village in 1912 to escape conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, and his mother, Julia, could not follow him to America until 1921.
Q 03Which nervous-system disorder kept Warhol in bed for long stretches when he was eight?
Sydenham's chorea
Sydenham's chorea, a complication of a streptococcal infection, causes involuntary jerking movements. Kept home in bed, he drew and filled scrapbooks with pictures from Hollywood magazines.
Q 04Which Manhattan nightclub, opened in 1977, counted Warhol as a regular alongside Halston, Bianca Jagger and Liza Minnelli?
Studio 54
Studio 54 had Warhol as a regular from the April it opened, but his boyfriend Jed Johnson never liked the scene and said that things changed between the two of them after that.
Q 05As a student, Warhol won a prize for sketching customers from which summer job?
Selling produce
Selling produce in the summer of 1946 put him in front of everyone from the newly rich to struggling families. He called the job a wonderful experience and said 'people are funny'.
Q 06Warhol earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1949 in which subject?
Pictorial design
Pictorial design was the degree Warhol took at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. That summer he moved to New York with classmate Philip Pearlstein to work as a commercial artist.
Q 07Warhol's first solo exhibition in 1952 consisted of drawings based on the writings of which author?
Truman Capote
Truman Capote had been getting fan letters from Warhol, who later said he wrote to the author every day for years, until Capote's mother phoned and told him to stop.
Q 08Warhol's 1950s drawing technique, combining printmaking and pencil work on paper, was known as what?
Blotted line
Blotted line meant inking a pencil drawing and pressing it onto fresh paper while wet. Because the step could be repeated, he could bring a client several versions of one illustration.
Q 09Which shoe manufacturer's advertisements did Warhol illustrate from 1955, winning an Art Directors Club award the following year?
Israel Miller
Israel Miller had made his name with shoes for dancers and actors and died in 1929. It was the company bearing his name that hired Warhol a quarter of a century later.
Q 10In 1956 MoMA politely declined Warhol's gift of a drawing called Shoe, citing what?
Limited storage space
Limited storage space was Alfred Barr's polite excuse, and his postscript asked Warhol to come and collect the drawing. That same year a Warhol shoe drawing hung in the museum's Recent Drawings U.S.A. show.
Q 11Whose calligraphy did Warhol often use alongside his drawings in his self-published 1950s books?
His mother's
His mother's ornate script was admired enough that her lettering for one of his album covers won a design award, made out not to Julia Warhola but to 'Andy Warhol's Mother'.
Q 12Warhol's first Pop paintings were shown in April 1961 as a backdrop in which store's window?
Bonwit Teller
Bonwit Teller was already a client of Warhol the commercial artist, so his new comic-strip and advertisement canvases went up as window dressing, behind mannequins in spring dresses.
Q 13What did Muriel Latow, paid $50 for the idea, tell Warhol to paint because he loved it most?
Money
Q 21For his 1966 Castelli show, Warhol took dealer Ivan Karp's 'wonderfully pastoral' suggestion and papered a room with which animal?
Cows
Cows, but hardly pastoral ones: Warhol printed a huge cow's head in bright pink on yellow and had it made into wallpaper. Karp was shocked, then declared the result 'super-pastoral'.
Q 22Warhol's eight-hour silent film is a fixed view of which New York landmark?
The Empire State Building
The Empire State Building was filmed from an office in the Time-Life Building through one July night in 1964. Warhol then slowed the projection, so six and a half hours of footage last just over eight.
Q 23Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl was a loose adaptation of which novel?
A Clockwork Orange
Money, in one of several tellings of that evening; what they share is the $50 cheque he wrote her. The dollar bills he painted soon afterwards were among his first silkscreens.
Q 14Warhol's 1962 Ferus Gallery show hung 32 canvases, one for each variety of what?
Campbell's soup
Campbell's soup came in 32 varieties, and each canvas stood on a narrow shelf, like groceries in a store. Warhol said he had eaten the same lunch every day for twenty years.
Q 15Which dealer gave Warhol his first solo New York Pop show at her Stable Gallery in November 1962?
Eleanor Ward
Eleanor Ward, by her own account, had a November slot fall open when she dropped another artist. The architect Philip Johnson bought Gold Marilyn Monroe from the show and later gave it to the Museum of Modern Art.
Q 16Warhol's 1962 Marilyn silkscreens were based on a publicity still from which film?
Niagara
Niagara supplied the face: Warhol cropped a 1953 publicity still for the film and began the silkscreens shortly after Monroe's death in August 1962.
Q 17Who fired a pistol through a stack of Warhol's Marilyn canvases at the Factory in 1964?
Dorothy Podber
Dorothy Podber asked if she could shoot the stacked paintings, and Warhol agreed, thinking she meant with a camera. She drew a pistol and fired, and he asked that she not be let back in.
Q 18Who covered the Factory in aluminium foil and silver paint in 1964?
Billy Name
Billy Name had already covered his own apartment in foil and silver paint. Warhol saw it at one of Name's haircutting parties and asked him to do the same to the new loft.
Q 19Warhol's mural Thirteen Most Wanted Men, made for the 1964 New York World's Fair, met what fate?
It was painted over
It was painted over in silver days before the fair opened, after state officials objected to the mugshots. Warhol offered portraits of the fair's president, Robert Moses, instead, and those were refused too.
Q 20Warhol's 1964 Stable Gallery show filled the rooms with stacked sculptures of what?
Commercial cartons such as Brillo boxes
Commercial cartons such as Brillo boxes were really plywood copies: Warhol ordered plain wooden boxes, silkscreened the packaging onto them and stacked them until the gallery looked like a warehouse.
A Clockwork Orange reached the screen through Warhol six years before Kubrick: he sent the novel to his screenwriter Ronald Tavel and added Edie Sedgwick to the all-male cast, where she never speaks a line.
Q 24Which band did Warhol manage, providing the cover art for their 1967 debut album?
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground took on the German singer Nico at Warhol's suggestion, and early copies of the album let buyers peel back his banana sticker, labelled 'Peel slowly and see'.
Q 25Warhol's 1966 multimedia shows with his house band at the Dom were called what?
Exploding Plastic Inevitable
Exploding Plastic Inevitable grew out of a stunt that January: invited to address a banquet of some three hundred psychiatrists and guests, Warhol brought the band and its dancers instead of a speech.
Q 26How was Warhol's 1966 film Chelsea Girls designed to be projected?
Two reels side by side on a split screen
Two reels side by side on a split screen meant two projectors, and they never ran in exact sync, so every screening of the film came out a little different.
Q 27In 1967 Warhol sent an actor to impersonate him on a speaking tour of which venues?
Western colleges
Western colleges in Oregon, Utah and Montana got the actor Allen Midgette, powder in his hair, in Warhol's place. Months later Warhol admitted the switch, refunded the fees and went back in person.
Q 28Who shot Warhol at the Factory on June 3, 1968?
Valerie Solanas
Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, fired three shots at Warhol; one passed through his lungs, spleen, stomach, liver and oesophagus, and he spent nearly two months in hospital.
Q 29After he was shot in 1968, what did Warhol have to wear for the rest of his life?
A surgical corset
A surgical corset kept his stomach from distending when he ate, because a second operation the year after the shooting left his abdominal muscles improperly repaired.
Q 30Which magazine did Warhol found in 1969 with British journalist John Wilcock?
Interview
Interview was launched in late 1969 as inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal by Warhol and John Wilcock; copies of the magazine were tossed into his grave in 1987.