Every morning, Andy Warhol picked up the phone to hear from his secretary, Pat Hackett. After a quick chat about nothing much, the artist launched into tales of what he had done the day before. Hackett recalls in the foreword to the artist’s diaries that these sessions were a daily ritual, often lasting one to two hours, his five-minute job turning into a full narrative ritual.
Thanks to these diaries, we can glimpse moments like Friday, January 14, 1983, when Warhol did not have a smooth day. He visited his new studio to check on work, only to find that things were not going as planned. Returning home, he felt a sudden mood of rebellion without a clear cause. In the diary entry for his next day, January 25, he notes a surreal image involving James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo, then of a shifting mood that left him feeling isolated and unfinished. Warhol recorded these fragments with a detached candidness that invites reflection on his interior life during a busy period.
Despite his exacting nature, Warhol did not document every moment between diary entries, leaving a gap of eleven days that he chose not to fill. For him, those days held little relevance, yet for a generation of Spaniards they marked a shift from a sleepy town to a modern city, a transformation that Madrid embodied in this period.
capital of pop
That January, Madrid earned the title of pop art capital. On Tuesday the 11th, Roy Lichtenstein arrived to oversee the staging of a retrospective at the Fundación Juan March. After attending the opening, the painter departed Spain on Saturday the 15th, just hours before Warhol would land at Barajas on Sunday the 16th.
Warhol himself journeyed to Madrid to support an exhibition titled Guns, Knives and Crosses. The show comprised thirty paintings and ten drawings, and for the first time worldwide, its display was made possible through a special agreement between gallery owner Fernando Vijande and the artist. The gallery purchased the works, a move that had seemed unlikely at the outset.
There was no shortage of questions as Warhol moved through the crowd. Reporters asked if his presence was spontaneous or deliberate, whether he had been subjected to injections, if he remained Catholic, and even why he wore two watches. The questions touched on art, identity, and celebrity, weaving together curiosity and astonishment about the man behind the persona.
Despite a natural shyness, Warhol conducted himself with professionalism. He approached Spain as a business trip rather than a sightseeing visit, focused on paying his bills and seeking portrait commissions. Yet he also relished the atmosphere of parties and the fresh experience of a country new to him. In a later recounting with World Photographer Christopher Makos, who accompanied him, Warhol’s associate Fred Hughes described a voyage that mixed commerce with cultural immersion.
He managed to close three portrait commissions, earning approximately 3,250,000 pesetas per sitter, roughly eighteen thousand euros at the time. The sale of works from the Madrid exhibition, however, did not meet expectations. In the documentary, Warhol explained that he was still little known in Spain, noting that the public had begun to recognize him only after the visit. A local publicist, Carlos Martorell, described Warhol as a Spaniard’s friend, and Vijande’s efforts to monetize the show proved costly. The revenue barely covered airfare and hotel expenses, with additional charges for shipping and unsold works climbing high above expectations.
nothing is welcome
Alongside press conferences, trips to Toledo, Chinchón, and the Prado gift shop, Warhol’s Madrid schedule was packed with cocktails, lunches, and parties. An incident at the March family estate on Calle Miguel Ángel involved Warhol wearing dress pants over his usual denim—a fashion misstep that Vijande warned him about, underscoring the tension between style and circumstance.
Two or three years earlier, the doors of Madrid’s upper social circles had begun to open to more radical and innovative movements, as noted by Luis Antonio de Villena. A dinner on an upper floor brought together a mix of artists and power players, some of whom were seated near Warhol but spoke little due to his reserved nature. The author describes a scene of careful, almost ceremonial interaction that contrasted with Warhol’s usual ease in other settings.
The after-party, however, showed Warhol in a different light. He engaged in short conversations with a heterogeneous crowd that included artists and cultural figures rather than mere social climbers. The guest list read like a who’s who of the era, from Pitita Ridruejo to Pedro J. Ramírez, Lucía Dominguín, and many others. When asked why he was called a Spanish Warhol, Warhol joked about his films and the provocative personas they portrayed, hinting at a broader conversation about art, sexuality, and media. Patty Diphusa, a recurring figure in the Madrid scene, contributed to the playful, sometimes absurd, exchanges of the night.
De Villena recalls how the modern guests danced, talked, and laughed, while Warhol wandered the corridors with his camera, seemingly absorbed in the act of capturing the moment rather than the moment itself. Some believed the camera lacked film or that the images would never see the light, yet Makos notes that Warhol enjoyed the experience and was intrigued by the Spaniards’ charisma. He even accepted a large shipment of Mallorcan pasta to bring back to New York, a detail that underscored the traveler’s appetite for cultural exchange. Warhol never admitted Madrid as a preferred destination, and at a Vijande Gallery press conference a reporter asked why he chose Madrid to announce his latest work. His reply, a wry comment on the city’s appeal, hinted at the improvisational nature of his forays into new places.