Hammer and Sickle (FS II.162 – Black and White – Unique) is a unique screenprint from Andy Warhol’s Hammer and Sickle series. The portfolio, created in 1977, features a simplistic and further deconstructed version of the Hammer and Sickle portfolio including tools that were not featured in the original. The inspiration for the portfolio came to be after Warhol traveled to Italy in 1976. While in Italy he came across various amounts of street graffiti that depicted the hammer and sickle, representing the union of farm and industrial workers under communist control. Taken by the ubiquity of the symbol, Warhol returned to Manhattan to reimagine the famed icconography.
