Ronnie Cutrone was a Pop artist best known for his large‐scale paintings of America's favorite cartoon characters, such as Felix the Cat, Pink Panther and Woody Woodpecker.

 

On the surface, Cutrone's paintings are the essence of pop: colorful, lively, and highly accessible.  Many of them seem to have been delivered with the kind of wide-eyed , non-judgmental attitude one might expect from Cutrone, who was Andy Warhol's immediate assistant at the factory from 1972 until 1980, Warhol's most productive and prestigious years. During the time Cutrone worked side by side with the Pop master on paintings, prints, films, and concepts, he hit upon the style critics called "Post-Pop." And, along with Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga, danced on stage with the Velvet Underground and Nico as part of the Exploding Plastic inevitable show.

 

He showed at the Niveau Gallery in 1979 with a Scotish artist called Mike Gall who showed paintings of Snoopy, Mickey and Minnie mouse, the Pink Panther and also a series of Peter Rabbit paintings. He achieved international acclaim with this very first post-Warhol show.

 

Together with Kenny Sharf, Cutrone revived the comic strip in painting. By using established characters such as Woody Woodpecker and Felix the Cat, Cutrone redefined themes of originality and authorship, and of low-brow taste and fine art which makes him directly indebted to Pop Art of the early Sixties. His use of bright and fluorescent colors encouraged Andy Warhol's return to such hues of heightened artificiality."Everything is a cartoon for me," Ronnie Cutrone says. "The ancient manuscripts are taken very seriously but they really are cartoons."

 

Cutrone's works have been exhibited at: Whitney Museum, New York, Museum of Modern Art,New York, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and important international fine art galeries.

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