Who created the 1962 silkscreen painting 'Marilyn Diptych'?

The 1962 silkscreen painting Marilyn Diptych was created by Andy Warhol.

Warhol made the work shortly after Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, using a publicity photograph of her from the 1953 film Niagara. He repeated the actress’s face 50 times across two adjoining panels, turning a single celebrity image into a meditation on fame, reproduction, and mortality.

The left panel uses vivid color, while the right shifts into black-and-white images that become increasingly faded and distorted. That contrast is often read as a visual movement from celebrity glamour toward death and disappearance, although the work’s meaning is not limited to one interpretation.

The title “diptych” refers to the two-panel format. It is sometimes confused with Warhol’s related Marilyn works, including Gold Marilyn Monroe, but Marilyn Diptych is specifically the 50-image composition divided between colored and monochrome halves. The work is held by Tate Modern in London.