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Andy Warhol's residence in New York City was located between Madison Avenue and Park Avenue at 57 E. 66th St., it was a large five-story red brick townhouse. Warhol lived here between 1974 and 1987, filling the house year after year with all kinds of antique and vintage objects of which he was an avid collector. Thomas Kiedrowski's book Andy Warhol's New York informs us: “He would go antiquing every day, often at Vito Giallo Antiques on Madison Avenue and 76th Street (a shop now closed). He’d come home, drop his purchases off in a room, and then do it again the next day. He didn’t use the stuff, he would just put it in boxes. When the Sotheby’s auction came up after his death, they said everything was in their boxes with the Vito’s stickers left on. Warhol had never opened any of it. But he was so excited when he found out he could write the purchases off on taxes as a business expense for Andy Warhol Enterprises.”
Vito Giallo, the founder of Warhol's favourite antique shop, was not simply a merchant, but a multifaceted man. Originally from Brewster, NY, Giallo graduated from art school with honors in 1951 and quickly became a graphic designer in the vibrant world of New York advertising. Within two years, he was hired by renowned graphic artist Jack Wolfgang Beck (1923-1988) to help him transform his large studio into an art gallery, known to all as "The Loft Gallery". It was here that Giallo gathered a team of artists and invited Andy Warhol to hold his first solo exhibition in New York in 1954.
The friendship between Giallo and Warhol grew in the summer of 1955 and when Giallo decided to close "The Loft Gallery" Warhol asked him if he wanted to work with him on various commercial projects. "Andy, was a cheerful and funny man," says Vito Giallo during an interview in the 90s, "he found a funny side in any situation, I think he never really took anything seriously.” Giallo, and most of the artistic entourage in New York, was absolutely stunned by the great success of some of Warhol's works such as the Campbell's series of tomato soup jars, and soon the two took different paths, one towards stellar artistic success and the other towards a career as an antique dealer.
Vito Giallo's shop at became a must for New York jet-setters to shop Victorian furniture, turtle and bamboo decor, wicker chairs, hand blown glassware and china. "For at least twenty years I never saw Andy again," says Giallo, "until one day he poked his nose into my store and said, "Hey Vito, wow!" And from that day on he came to my store every day until he died. He bought thousands of items from my shop.”
