Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century

This bold grid of faces comes from Andy Warhol, the famous leader of the Pop Art movement, who created the series in 1980. The ten people shown here were all influential Jewish figures of the twentieth century, including physicist Albert Einstein, writer Franz Kafka, philosopher Martin Buber, and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Warhol made the portraits using his signature method, layering photographs with loose hand drawing and blocks of bright, overlapping color that seem to float across each face.

The project was actually suggested to Warhol by an art dealer, and at the time some critics were unsure about it. A few felt the commercial approach did not quite match the seriousness of the subjects. Still, the works carry that unmistakable Warhol energy, turning historical figures into something that feels modern and almost like celebrity posters. Look closely and you can see how the sketchy lines and shifting colors give each person a slightly different mood, from the playful scribbles around Einstein to the calmer tones surrounding Freud.