The art on our home page: a return to Warhol

We first used Andy Warhol’s homage to Beethoven on our website back in 2018. We liked it so much we’ve chosen the most vibrantly colorful of his four screenprints to be the ‘face’ of our 2020 Festival, at which we honor Beethoven’s birth in Bonn, Germany 250 years ago.

Pittsburgh native Warhol (b. 1928) created his 40 x 40 inch Beethoven images in 1987, the year he died. Passages from piano sonata No. 14 ("Moonlight") are superimposed on all four. Warhol's inspiration was what is likely the best known image of Beethoven, an 1820 oil portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler.