Suicide (Purple Jumping Man)

Suicide (Purple Jumping Man) is a 1963 silkscreen painting by an American pop artist, Andy Warhol. It is currently in the collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran.^[1]

Suicide (Purple Jumping Man)
Artist	Andy Warhol
Year	1963 (1963)
Type	Silkscreen on canvas
Dimensions	230 cm × 202 cm (90.5 in × 79.5 in)
Location	Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran

History

During 1970s Iran's oil revenue had increased and the king and queen of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Farah Diba decided to establish a museum of contemporary art in order to modernize their country.^[2][3] Suicide (Purple Jumping Man) was among the paintings that Tony Shafrazi, the Iranian-born American art dealer, bought for the collection of this museum.^[4]

At that time, Andy Warhol was interested in the idea and painted portraits of the king and his wife.^[3]

Style

Suicide (Purple Jumping Man) depicts two images in sequence, recorded by a documentary photographer, silk-screened in black ink on a purple ground.^[5]

According to Tony Shafrazi, Suicide (Purple Jumping Man) is one of the greatest works of Warhol. Shafrazi estimates the painting's value at 70 million dollars.^[4]