Electric Chair (F. & S. II.82)

An empty chair in an empty room

The picture starts with a news photograph. In 1953 the press published an image of the death chamber at Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York, about 30 miles north of Manhattan on the Hudson. It showed the equipment used in one of the most closely watched executions in American history: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, were put to death in that chamber on June 19, 1953.

Warhol took the photograph into his Death and Disaster series, which began in 1962 after he saw a newspaper headline that read '129 Die in Jet.' He worked from news pictures, police photographs and wire-service images, enlarged them and screened them onto canvas, often repeating one image many times. He first used the image of the empty electric chair in 1963, and returned to it in the large Big Electric Chair paintings of 1967-68.

Unlike the car crashes and suicides elsewhere in the series, the Electric Chair shows no violence and no person. The vacant chair stands in for the body. Warhol said that seeing a gruesome picture over and over again strips it of its effect, and the chair is the clearest test of that idea.

Warhol, Bischofberger and a Zurich print shop

In 1971 the Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger, an early champion of Warhol and a driving force behind his European market, published the image as a portfolio of ten large screenprints. It was Warhol's first major print commission from a European publisher. The prints were made at Silkprint Kettner in Zurich.

For the portfolio Warhol drew on his 1960s paintings but cropped the press photograph more tightly, so the chair fills more of the sheet. Each of the ten prints carries the same image in a different color scheme. Some are pale and ghostly; others use what one description calls luminous fuchsia pinks, sunshine yellows and sky blues. Several are printed in negative, with lights and darks reversed.

Each sheet is signed and dated 'Andy Warhol '71' in ballpoint pen on the back and numbered with a rubber stamp out of 250. Another 50 artist's proofs are numbered in Roman numerals. The Bischofberger inkstamp also appears on the back of examples that have come to auction.

Capital punishment on trial

When Warhol first painted the chair in 1963, New York was carrying out its last executions. Sing Sing's chair, known as Old Sparky, had been used on 614 men and women. The last person executed in the state, Eddie Lee Mays, died in it on August 15, 1963. In the early 1970s the chair was moved, in working order, to Green Haven Correctional Facility, where it was never used again.

The portfolio appeared in 1971, a year when the death penalty was under fierce national debate, and when the uprising at Attica, another New York prison, made headlines in September. Warhol himself had nearly died three years earlier, when he was shot in 1968, and dealers often read the early-1970s return to death imagery in that light.

How to recognize II.82

The Feldman & Schellmann catalogue raisonne numbers the ten Electric Chair prints II.74 through II.83. II.82 is one of the brightest of the set: the chair and room are printed in negative in hot pink and warm yellow, with the tonal values reversed so the shadows glow.

A genuine impression measures about 90 by 122 cm, carries Warhol's ballpoint signature and the '71 date on the back, and has a stamped edition number out of 250 (or a Roman-numeral artist's proof number). An example offered at auction in New York in February 2026 was stamp-numbered 24/250 and bore Bischofberger's inkstamp on the back.

One museum, Cranbrook Art Museum in Michigan, describes the 1971 portfolio as eight prints; the publisher's and most institutional records describe ten. Complete sets are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, Tate, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Australia.

In the market

Because 250 numbered impressions exist, II.82 comes to market regularly. One market tracker counts 17 auction appearances since 1970. Over the last five years, hammer prices for the print have run from £4,000 in March 2025 to £20,034 in October 2024. Prices depend heavily on condition, since the large, saturated sheets show fading and handling marks.

Complete portfolios are scarcer. A full set of ten numbered 064/250 sold at auction in London for £122,500 against an estimate of £60,000 to £80,000. A set Warhol gave to his partner, the interior designer Jed Johnson, stayed in its original box and was first offered for sale at a Miami art fair in 2025.

The paintings sit in a different league. A 1960s Electric Chair painting set a series record of $20.4 million at auction in 2014, and in 2025 the six-foot-wide Big Electric Chair of 1967-68, from the collection of Belgian collectors Roger Matthys and Hilda Colle, was offered in New York with an estimate of about $30 million.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on wove paper

Dimensions

About 90 x 122 cm (35 1/2 x 48 in); one auctioned impression measured 90 x 121.5 cm

Edition

250 numbered impressions plus 50 artist's proofs

Catalogue raisonne

Feldman & Schellmann II.82

Portfolio

Electric Chair, ten screenprints, F. & S. II.74 to II.83

Public collections (complete portfolio)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim, Tate, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Australia

Timeline

1. Jun 19, 1953

   Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. A press photograph of the death chamber circulates the same year.

2. Jun 4, 1962

   Warhol sees the headline '129 Die in Jet,' the starting point of his Death and Disaster series.

3. 1963

   Warhol first uses the image of the empty electric chair.

4. Aug 15, 1963

   Eddie Lee Mays becomes the last person executed in New York state, at Sing Sing.

5. 1967

   Warhol begins the six-foot-wide Big Electric Chair paintings (1967-68).

6. 1971

   Bruno Bischofberger publishes the Electric Chair portfolio of ten screenprints, printed by Silkprint Kettner in Zurich, in an edition of 250 plus 50 artist's proofs.

7. 2014

   An Electric Chair painting sets the series auction record at $20.4 million.

8. Oct 2024

   II.82 brings a hammer price of £20,034, the top result for the print in five years.

9. 2025

   A complete portfolio once owned by Jed Johnson, Warhol's partner, is offered for the first time, at a Miami art fair.

10. Mar 2025

    An impression of II.82 sells for a hammer price of £4,000, the low of the five-year range.

11. Feb 27, 2026

    Impression 24/250 of II.82 is offered at auction in New York with an estimate of $8,000 to $12,000.

The world in 1971

• Jan 31, 1971

  Apollo 14 lifts off on the third successful lunar landing mission.

• Feb 15, 1971

  The United Kingdom and Ireland switch to decimal currency.

• Jun 13, 1971

  The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers.

• Jun 17, 1971

  President Richard Nixon declares the U.S. war on drugs.

• Jul 5, 1971

  The 26th Amendment lowers the U.S. voting age from 21 to 18.

• Sep 9, 1971

  The Attica prison uprising begins in New York.

• Oct 1, 1971

  Walt Disney World opens in Florida.

Price record

This is an asking price, not a sale. It is what a seller wanted on the date shown. Asking prices often sit above what buyers pay, but an ask is not a ceiling: a sale can land on either side of it. It is not a value.

By reference price, Electric Chair (F. & S. II.82) is number 70 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (67 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The chair in the print, Sing Sing's Old Sparky, killed 614 people before New York stopped executions. It was later moved to another prison in working order and never used again.
• Warhol first silkscreened the electric chair in 1963, the same year New York carried out its last execution.
• The Electric Chair portfolio was Warhol's first major print commission from a European publisher.
• II.82 is printed in negative: the darks of the original photograph glow in hot pink and yellow.
• Warhol gave a complete set to his partner Jed Johnson. It stayed in its original box and was never offered for sale until 2025.