Andy Warhol’s Ancestry: Facts, Myths, and Mysteries

Elaine Rusinko

Associate Professor Emerita

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

January 7, 2019

Andy Warhol is the most famous American of Carpatho-Rusyn descent, but questions about his ethnicity persist. This study explores the Warhola-Zavacky family’s ethnic background and traces Warhol’s ancestry based on archival evidence, uncovering new, unanticipated information.

When asked about his background, Andy Warhol told his associate and biographer Bob Colacello,“I come from nowhere.” Rarely noted is the fact that his uncertain geographical origin was amplified by a genealogical void. He confided to Colacello, “I never had a grandmother. Isn’t that strange?”

 To be sure, Andy never knew his grandparents, who lived and died in Europe, but they surely endured in the shadows of memory. His brother Paul recalls, “Mother

often talked about the relatives in Miková. She used to t=ell stories about the grandparents.”

 And according to Andy’s brother John, his mother Julia Zavacky was concerned that the history of “where I came from” would be lost  after her death, and therefore she told her children “such good stories.”

 Unfortunately, those stories were not recorded contemporaneously. Instead, they were handed down in myths and legends, with more or less credibility. Of special interest for Warhol’s genealogy is a family story, told to Colacello by second-generation American Warhol as, that one of Julia’s grandmothers was Jewish. From this, he that the Zavackys’ “Jewish blood” made them “outsiders among outsiders. (Like Andy.)”

While Colacello’s conclusion is contradicted by evidence of an extensive Zavacky

familial and communal network, there is, in fact, some mystery surrounding Julia’s maternal

line. And while it is not unusual for Rusyn-American families to pass down legends of a mysterious Jewish or “Gypsy” member of the family tree,such tales rarely stand up to scrutiny.Although they may contain a kernel of truth, family tales often cloud, rather than clarify, the picture.

Andy Warhol’s Carpatho-Rusyn background

Starting with the ethnic label, Carpatho-Rusyn, a few words of background are in order.Carpatho-Rusyns, also known as Rusyns, Rusnaks, Carpatho-Russians, and Ruthenians, are astateless people whose homeland today straddles the borders of five European countries.

"We Are All Warhol's Children: Andy and the Rusyns"

The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, 2012 

Elaine Rusinko

Andy Warhol is the world’s most famous American of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry, and the icons of the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church were his first exposure to art. His unexpected death in 1987 was followed by the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Rusyn movement for identity, which embraced the flamboyant pop artist, filmmaker, and jet setter as their iconic figurehead. From their own idiosyncratic perspective, the traditional, religious, provincial Rusyns have reconstructed the image of Andy Warhol, pointing up aspects of the artist that have gone largely unnoticed. In a reciprocal process, Andy has had a significant impact on the Rusyn movement and on the recognition of Rusyns worldwide. This study establishes Warhol’s Carpatho-Rusyn ethnicity and explores its possible influence on his persona and his art. It also analyzes the Rusyns’ reception of Warhol, with a focus on the history of the Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Slovakia. The author concludes that recognition of the Rusyn Andy contributes to a distinctive perspective on the American Warhol.

Publication Date: 2012

Publication Name: The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies