While Pittsburgh native pop artist Andy Warhol was a multidisciplinary creator — a painter, a photographer, a filmmaker — his most iconic and lasting images are his screenprints.

The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side is bringing new insight into the artist’s extensive career in this medium with the exhibition “Good Business: Andy Warhol’s Screenprints,” opening Friday.

The title takes inspiration from a famous Warhol quote, “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” It examines the ways that the artist’s development as a printmaker also helped his art to reach more people.

“We haven’t really had a show highlighting just the prints in quite a while,” said Amber Morgan, director of collections and exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum, at a preview on Thursday. “So it was a good thing to bring some of this out and introduce people to some works that maybe they just aren’t familiar with.”

That being said, some of the pieces in “Good Business” will be plenty familiar — for example, the back wall is adorned with two rows of Campbell’s Soup can prints, a well-loved image for any Warhol fan.

The exhibition also highlights the Warhol Museum’s education program. An essential part of “Good Business” is delving into the arduous process of screenprinting and charting Warhol’s career path into mastering — and then, in some ways, revolutionizing — the art form. The museum even produced a video — which is played in the exhibit — that demonstrates the intricate process.

The first gallery shows several works of Warhol’s at the experimental beginnings of his screenprinting journey.

“His first screenprints that we know of are actually these two dollar bill prints,” Morgan said. “They’re so muddy and murky. That’s him really printing quickly and dirty.”

Eventually, he became more precise, and then less precise again.

“He embraces these mechanical techniques. … But then the sort of funny twist of that is, then he goes and makes them look less mechanical. You have this medium picked specifically because you like that mass-produced, commercial, streamlined. And then he introduces these elements that make them look handmade.”

In addition to the Campbell’s Soup prints, “Good Business” contains some of Warhol’s other famous images, including prints of Marilyn Monroe, his stylized screenprinted flowers and his “Disaster” series.

“With pop artists, they were using things from the world around them, everyday objects. … It makes the works become more accessible. Even if you don’t understand pop art, you’ve seen soup before. There’s always a way to engage in a conversation,” Morgan said.

In the gallery that concentrates on Warhol’s pop art and its sources, viewers can see materials from which Warhol got his printed images — from books, Polaroids, newspaper clippings and others — and how he edited and manipulated them to create something new and unique.

“As his career evolved, now he starts to borrow from himself,” Morgan said, gesturing to screenprints of Warhol’s own earlier work.

Another aspect of Warhol’s printing artistry was his dabbling in changing up colors, repeating the same image in different shades and hues.

“Screenprinting allows you to do that, because you can just ink a new color. You don’t have to start from scratch,” Morgan said.

One room in the exhibit focuses on Warhol’s philanthropy and fundraising. “What Warhol is learning throughout the process of creating prints is that they’re really collectible, there’s a great market for those.”

He began to publish prints on his own, then with other publishers.

Warhol liked to pay for his less-lucrative passion projects with his more commercial work. But once he got successful enough, he was able to contribute artwork to — and fundraise for — different causes.

Included in this section are prints from his “Endangered Species” portfolio, which contains colorful, stylized images of animals such as a panda, a black rhinoceros and a Grévy’s zebra.

“This portfolio wasn’t sold as a fundraiser, but was meant to elevate a cause,” Morgan said.

There are also portraits of German Cancer Aid founder Mildred Scheel and dancers Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. Then there are some political portraits, including of President Jimmy Carter.

“He went down and visited the peanut farm and hung out for a while and had a good time,” Morgan said.

There’s also a small section that most reflects the title of “Good Business.” Morgan explained that artists making prints traditionally made editions or portfolios (sets containing multiple prints) that were all the same and were numbered to be sold. Warhol — being the constant innovator — did things a little differently, by even mixing up the colors that buyers may receive.

The portfolio on display to represent this principle is a series of dollar signs, all with individual color schemes — and different from the colors another portfolio may contain.

“I wanted to talk about how prints particularly tie so well with pop art and tie so well to accessibility of artwork and distribution of artwork,” Morgan said. “Warhol commented on that earlier in his career. Not everyone can afford the painting, but maybe they can get a print. Early on, he would do things like just give them away.”

“His engagement with printmaking is something that gets his work in front of more people, and prints in general tend to have that greater level of accessibility,” she added.

“Good Business: Andy Warhol’s Screenprints” is on display at the Warhol Museum on the North Side through Sept. 1. For more information, visit warhol.org.

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