This 13"h x 19"w overall (9.5"h x 14"w image size) digital photographic print in color on Epson Professional Photo paper is from an edition of 50 total prints signed, numbered and titled by the artist, photographer Nat Finkelstein (on verso). Published in 2007.
This great color shot catches a reclining Nico, reading the newspaper on the famous Factory couch. Her beauty and style was timeless - her hair and clothing would still be in fashion today, over 40 years later.
Best known by her pseudonym "Nico", the multi-talented Christa Päffgen (1938 – 1988) became a well-known member of Andy Warhol's Factory "Superstars". Having met Brian Jones in 1965, the German-born singer/songwriter cast her spell on both Jones and then, later that year, on Bob Dylan, both whom worked to advance her musical and film careers.
As an actress, she worked with Warhol and Paul Morrissey and appeared in films such as Chelsea Girls and The Closet. Warhol then added her to the band that provided the music for his "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" (EPI) shows - The Velvet Underground - and there she added her vocal and keyboard talents to songs such as "Femme Fatale", "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Sunday Morning", the latter which appeared on their 1967 break-through LP The Velvet Underground and Nico.
During her career, she was linked romantically with a variety of established rock'n'roll talent, including Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Tim Buckley and Jackson Browne. Although she parted ways with the Velvets after the end of the EPI tours to start a solo career, both Lou Reed and John Cale continued to help her in her solo efforts, along with others including Phil Manzanera of the Doors and keyboardist/producer Brian Eno.
From 1963 to 1968, the post-war Pop Art world partied at artist Andy Warhol’s mid-town New York City studio known as The Factory. 231 East 47th Street was where Warhol and his cohorts - artists, poets, porn stars, musicians, drug addicts and his “Superstars” - created his silkscreens and lithographs and his films, and it became the center of the Hip Universe.
For three years (1964-67), photographer Nat Finkelstein was on the scene, documenting the explosive emergence of Pop Art, a subversive spectacle created by the constantly calculating Andy Warhol (his book Andy Warhol: The Factory Years is "an extraordinary photographic account of the twisted, the addicted, the nameless, and the famous"). As the unofficial photojournalist and active member of the inner circle there, Finkelstein discreetly photographed many emerging stars, including Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Nico, Edie Sedgwick (of Factory Girl fame) along with the very-photogenic Warhol and other legends of art and literature such as Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali.
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