How Did Andy Warhol Die?
Andy Warhol died on 22 February 1987 in New York, the morning after what should have been a routine gallbladder operation. He was 58.
The man who had survived a shooting nineteen years earlier was killed, in the end, by a hospital stay he had dreaded and put off for as long as he could.
The operation he kept avoiding
Warhol had a diseased gallbladder for years but was terrified of hospitals, partly because of the trauma of being shot in 1968.
By the time he finally agreed to surgery, his condition was serious. The operation itself seemed to go well, and he was expected to recover.
Death in the night
Hours after the surgery, in the early morning, Warhol died in his hospital bed of a cardiac arrhythmia in his sleep.
His sudden death shocked the art world, which had assumed the operation was minor. A later legal case raised questions about the care he received that night.
The lawsuit and the funeral
The circumstances of his death led his estate to sue the hospital, and the case was eventually settled. Questions lingered over whether he had been properly monitored and whether he had been given too much fluid overnight.
Warhol was buried beside his parents in his home city of Pittsburgh, in a simple Catholic service. A larger memorial later filled St Patrick Cathedral in New York, where hundreds came to mark the passing of the man who had made fame itself his subject.
Common questions about Warhol's death
When did he die?
22 February 1987.
What did he die of?
A cardiac arrhythmia after gallbladder surgery.
How old was he?
Fifty eight.
Was the surgery dangerous?
It was meant to be routine, which is why the death stunned everyone.
The quiet exit of a loud life
For an artist who turned fame, death and disaster into subjects, Warhol own end was strangely ordinary and avoidable, a routine operation that went wrong. Read his whole story in the Andy Warhol guide.