MURIEL LATOW was a medium of artistic expression, living to inspire others with ideas. Amused to be known as the person who started Andy Warhol on the road to fame, she is credited as giving him the idea of painting soup cans and dollar bills.
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A lifelong iconoclast, Latow rebelled against conventional taste when she opened her modern-art gallery in New York, where she mixed with some of the most prominent Abstract artists and Impressionist painters of the time, including Mark Rothko and Franz Kline.
Another of her friends was Warhol, New York’s most sought-after and highly paid commercial artist of the 1950s. In that decade he earned a six-figure sum each year, but when he decided to pursue his own artistic interests, taking on fewer commercial assignments, his income plummeted. It was during an evening meal in 1961 that he asked Latow, as a friend and as an expert on the art market, for advice.
Before giving him the idea, she asked him to pay her $50. She was not intending to make a profit from him, but asked for it simply as a token. She did not believe in giving her ideas away.

Obituary in The Times