Which supermarket product inspired Andy Warhol’s 1962 painting series Campbell’s Soup Cans?

Andy Warhol’s 1962 Campbell’s Soup Cans series was inspired by Campbell’s soup.

The series consists of 32 canvases, each depicting a different Campbell’s soup variety available at the time. Warhol presented the works together at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, where they became an important early statement of American Pop Art.

The paintings transformed an ordinary grocery-store package into a subject for fine art. Their repeated format also reflected Warhol’s interest in commercial printing, mass production, and the visual language of advertising. The series is often discussed alongside his later repeated images of Coca-Cola bottles and celebrities.

The works are not one painting repeated identically: each canvas corresponds to a separate soup variety. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the series in 1996.