In the spring of 1962, Warhol had been working on his new renditions of ads and comic strips when he saw Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-strip paintings at Leo Castelli Gallery. Requesting for suggestions on things to paint, he asked a friend, who suggested to choose something that everyone would recognize, like Campbell Soup. So he went to the store and bought them, and began to trace the projections of them onto a canvas. Instead of dripping paint, like he had done in many of his other pieces, he used mechanical reproduction. After he finished and public got to see it, he got a return studio visit from Irving Blum of Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, who was expecting to see comic-strip paintings and was surprised by the new soup cans. At this, the gallery offered Warhol a show. For his art show, he decided to paint one of each of the cans on shelves running the length of his gallery. And of course, the exhibition created a sensation in Los Angeles.
