Warhol Superstar

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Gerard Malanga worked closely for Andy Warhol during the artist’s most creative period, from 1963 to 1970. The New York Times referred to him as “Andy Warhol’s most important associate.”

After being introduced by a friend, Warhol hired Gerard because of previous experiences in silkscreening. Gerard eventually left college, and as he said, started “a summer job that last seven years.”  On his first day of working with Warhol, they created the iconic Elizabeth Taylor paintings. 

Malanga was heavily involved in Warhol’s filmmaking. Warhol’s famous three-minute “screen tests” stemmed from Gerard’s idea of creating a publicity photo of himself using movie film. Warhol and Malanga went on to create 500 screen tests of some of the most famous and unknown visitors to The Silver Factory. Malanga active in many of the early Warhol films, including Kiss (1963), Harlot (1964), Soap Opera (1964), Couch (1964), Vinyl (1965), Camp (1965), Chelsea Girls (1966); and co-produced Bufferin (1967) in which he reads his poetry, deemed to be the longest spoken-word movie on record at 33-minutes nonstop. 

In 1966, Malanga was became a creative collaborator and choreographer with the legendary rock group Velvet Underground, on Warhol’s multimedia presentation, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. 

In 1969, Malanga was one of the founding editors of Interview magazine, along with Warhol and John Wilcock. 

In December 1970, Malanga left Warhol’s studio to pursue his work in photography.