Sleuths find digital images hiding in Andy Warhol’s old computer

A group of university students and art sleuths have managed to recover lost digital images that were apparently created by Andy Warhol nearly 30 years ago and stored on floppy computer disks.

The Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museum of Art - the three Pittsburgh institutions that all had a hand in the project - revealed the story this week in three news releases that included some of the images.

Those three images of an altered Botticelli's Venus, a Warhol self-portrait, and a Campbell's soup can - of 28 that were found on the disks - were enough to excite Warhol fanatics around the world over the possibility that something - anything - new by the King of Pop Art had been revealed.

They were created on Warhol's Commodore Amiga computer in 1985 and included versions of some of his other most iconic images such as a banana and Marilyn Monroe, neither of which have been released yet, and may never be.

While the historic and artistic value will take more research and debate to be figured out, Matt Wrbican, the Andy Warhol Museum's chief archivist, said the interest was understandable for one of the world's most prolific and studied artists.

"It's something that's new," he said, "and that doesn't happen very often with Warhol".