Marilyn Monroe (F. & S. II.31)

A publicity still from Niagara

Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962 at the age of 36. Warhol later said, 'When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face.' He bought a publicity still from her 1953 film Niagara, an ordinary studio portrait with her lips parted, and cropped it tight around her face. The photograph was taken by Gene Kornman; one gallery spells the name Korman.

Within months the image was on canvas. Warhol's first solo Pop show in New York, at Eleanor Ward's gallery, opened on November 6, 1962, and included Marilyn Monroe Twenty Times, Flavor Marilyns and Gold Marilyn Monroe. Over the next two years he kept returning to the same photograph. In 1964 he painted five 40-inch square portraits in red, orange, light blue, sage blue and turquoise; that fall the performance artist Dorothy Podber asked if she could 'shoot' a stack of them, and fired a pistol through four. They have been known ever since as the Shot Marilyns.

By 1967 the face was already one of the most repeated images in American art. Warhol's next step was to make it available to anyone who could afford a print, in his own edition, under his own imprint.

From Pittsburgh to the Factory

Warhol was born Andrew Warhola Jr. on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, the son of working-class Rusyn immigrants. At eight he developed Sydenham's chorea after rheumatic fever and spent long spells in bed, drawing and cutting pictures out of Hollywood magazines and comic books his mother bought him. He earned a fine arts degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949 and moved to New York, where he became a highly successful commercial illustrator.

In 1962 he showed 32 Campbell's Soup canvases in Los Angeles and began making silkscreen paintings, transferring photographs to canvas mechanically rather than painting them by hand. By 1964 his studio at 231 East 47th Street, covered in foil and silver paint, was known as the Factory. His remark that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes first appeared in a 1967 Time article.

The year after the Marilyn portfolio, on June 3, 1968, the writer Valerie Solanas shot Warhol at the Factory. He spent nearly two months in the hospital, and the Factory afterward became a more structured business. Warhol died on February 22, 1987, at 58, after gallbladder surgery.

Factory Additions and the ten Marilyns

In 1967 Warhol set up Factory Additions to publish screenprint portfolios of his signature subjects, typically ten images in editions of 250. Marilyn Monroe was the first. The ten prints, cataloged by Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann as II.22 through II.31, all use the same cropped face. Each was printed from five screens, one carrying the photograph and four carrying areas of color, sometimes deliberately off register, so the same face changes character from sheet to sheet.

Warhol said of repetition, 'The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.' The art historian Robert Rosenblum wrote that Marilyn's face 'seems perpetually illuminated by the afterimage of a flashbulb.'

II.31 is the pink sheet: yellow hair, magenta eyelids and lips, and a magenta ground, with black ink laid over the top. A 2026 sale catalog called it 'the most celebrated colourway in this landmark series,' and a 2026 market study found it carried the highest average hammer price of the ten colorways, about £185,800 across 15 public sales since 2017.

Museums hold the portfolio. The Museum of Modern Art in New York owns a complete set, a gift of David Whitney, and the Art Institute of Chicago also holds Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) from 1967 in its collection.

Five decades at auction

II.31 has a long trading record. One market tracker counts 35 auction sales of this sheet since its first in 1970. On September 19, 2007, impression 16/250, which had passed through a Paris gallery, sold at auction in London for £78,500 against an estimate of £40,000 to £60,000. Specialists recall that a single Marilyn print that might have brought £10,000 to £20,000 in 2010 later traded with an extra zero.

The single largest jolt came from a painting. On May 9, 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold at auction in New York for $195 million, the most ever paid at auction for a 20th-century artwork. In the print market, total sales of Marilyn prints and sets jumped 298 percent that year, with 29 single prints and three complete sets selling.

II.31 set its colorway record in September 2025, when an impression sold at auction in London for £300,000, the second-highest result for any single Marilyn print at the time. The next month another sold in New York for £209,400 by one tracker's conversion. In October 2021 impression 217/250 sold at auction in New York for $378,000 against a $200,000 to $300,000 estimate. In September 2026 impression 113/250, bought from a Munich dealer in May 1982 and held by the same owner since, was offered with an estimate of £180,000 to £250,000; a tracker records a September 2026 online sale of II.31 at $280,000 with fees.

Collectors also chase complete sets. A set with every sheet numbered 26/250, still loose in its original box, sold at auction in London in July 2002 for £177,150. In 2026 attention rose again ahead of the centenary of Monroe's birth on June 1, 2026.

How to identify a Factory Additions II.31

A genuine impression is a 36-inch square printed to the edges of the full sheet. The edition of 250 is signed in pencil and numbered with a rubber stamp on the reverse; some impressions are signed in ballpoint pen, some only initialed, and some dated. The 26 artist's proofs are lettered A to Z. Sale catalogs also cite the Factory Additions publisher and the Aetna Silkscreen printer, and buyers check each impression against the Feldman and Schellmann catalogue entry.

Do not confuse the 1967 edition with the 'Sunday B. Morning' prints. In 1970 some of the acetates for Warhol's screens were taken to Europe and used to print new editions in Belgium, including Marilyn Monroe. Warhol later distanced himself from the project; some of those prints are stamped 'Fill in Your Own Signature' or inscribed by Warhol 'This is not by me, Andy Warhol,' and their reverse stamps are black on early printings and blue later.

Condition drives price within the edition. Specialists look at registration between the color layers, fading from light exposure in the flesh tones and saturated grounds, handling creases, mat burn and foxing. Because the prints are large and nearly always framed, the paper's history matters as much as the image.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on wove paper, printed to the edges of the sheet

Dimensions

36 x 36 in (91.4 x 91.4 cm; 91.5 cm in one museum record)

Catalogue raisonne

Feldman and Schellmann II.31 (portfolio II.22 to II.31)

Edition

250, signed in pencil and stamp-numbered on the reverse, plus 26 artist's proofs lettered A to Z

Publisher and printer

Factory Additions, New York; Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc., New York

Public collections

Museum of Modern Art, New York, holds the complete portfolio (gift of David Whitney); the Art Institute of Chicago also holds the 1967 Marilyn

Timeline

1. Aug 6, 1928

   Andrew Warhola Jr. is born in Pittsburgh.

2. 1953

   A publicity still is taken for Marilyn Monroe's film Niagara; it becomes Warhol's source image.

3. Aug 1962

   Marilyn Monroe dies at 36; Warhol begins making silkscreen paintings of her face.

4. Nov 6, 1962

   Warhol's first solo Pop show in New York opens, with Gold Marilyn Monroe and Flavor Marilyns.

5. 1964

   Warhol paints the five Shot Marilyns; Dorothy Podber fires a pistol through four of them at the Factory.

6. 1967

   Factory Additions publishes the Marilyn Monroe portfolio of ten screenprints, edition 250 plus 26 lettered proofs.

7. Jun 3, 1968

   Valerie Solanas shoots Warhol at the Factory.

8. 1970

   First recorded auction sale of II.31; the same year, Sunday B. Morning prints from Warhol's acetates appear in Belgium.

9. May 1982

   Impression 113/250 is bought from a Munich dealer; it stays with that owner until 2026.

10. Feb 22, 1987

    Warhol dies in New York at 58.

11. Sep 19, 2007

    Impression 16/250 sells at auction in London for £78,500.

12. Oct 22, 2020

    Impression 104/250 is offered at auction in New York with a $200,000 to $300,000 estimate.

13. Oct 2021

    Impression 217/250 sells at auction in New York for $378,000.

14. May 9, 2022

    Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sells for $195 million in New York; Marilyn print sales surge that year.

15. Sep 2025

    An II.31 sells at auction in London for £300,000, the colorway record.

16. Oct 2025

    Another II.31 sells at auction in New York, recorded at £209,400.

17. Jun 1, 2026

    The centenary of Marilyn Monroe's birth.

18. Sep 2026

    An II.31 sells online for $280,000 with fees.

The world in 1967

• Jan 15, 1967

  Super Bowl I: the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in Los Angeles.

• Apr 15, 1967

  Large demonstrations against the Vietnam War are held in New York City and San Francisco.

• Jun 12, 1967

  In Loving v. Virginia the Supreme Court strikes down state bans on interracial marriage.

• Jun 13, 1967

  Thurgood Marshall is nominated as the first African American justice of the Supreme Court.

• Jun 16, 1967

  The three-day Monterey Pop Festival begins in California.

• Jul 12, 1967

  Rioting breaks out in Newark, New Jersey, and continues for five days.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Marilyn Monroe (F. & S. II.31) is number 31 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 (33 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Marilyn Monroe was the first portfolio Warhol published under his own imprint, Factory Additions.
• Each sheet was printed from five screens: one for the photograph and four for blocks of color.
• In 1964 a visitor asked Warhol if she could 'shoot' his Marilyn canvases; he thought she meant photograph them, and she fired a pistol through four.
• Some unauthorized Belgian 'Sunday B. Morning' Marilyns were stamped 'Fill in Your Own Signature.'
• The painting Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million in 2022, and Marilyn print sales jumped 298 percent that year.
• One II.31 sold in 2026 had been in the same collection since May 1982.