Although Warhol’s Sea Turtle was a one-off work, it is certainly in the same style and spirit as the Endangered Animals series Warhol had done just two years earlier:
However, unlike the above series, which was printed to raise money for conservation causes, Sea Turtle print was commissioned as promotional art for a film. The movie was 1985’s Turtle Diary, directed by John Irvin and starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley:
Two separate people, a man and a woman, find something very stirring about the sea turtles in their tank at the London Zoo. They meet and form an odd, but sympathetic camaraderie as they plan to steal two of the turtles and free them into the ocean.