Red-Yellow-Blue #16, 1987
Red-Yellow-Blue #16 (Portrait of Adolpho), 1987
Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 88,900
Keith Haring – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 127 November 2023 | Phillips
KEITH HARING
Red-Yellow-Blue #16 (Portrait of Adolpho), 1987
Acrylic on canvas
36×36 inches (91.4 x 91.4 cm)
Signed, titled and dated
“RED-YELLOW-BLUE #16 (PORTRAIT OF ADOLPHO) © K. Haring JAN 12 87 ⨁” on the overlap
Painted in 1987 at the height of Keith Haring’s tragically short career, Red-Yellow-Blue #16 (Portrait of Adolpho) is an intimate and distinctive portrait of Haring’s last studio assistant, Adolfo Arena. Adolfo was first hired by Haring to work at the Pop Shop on Lafayette Street in the spring of 1986, having recently graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology. The following year, Adolfo replaced Haring’s studio assistant at the time and worked with him until the end of his life. Red-Yellow-Blue #16 (Portrait of Adolpho) belongs to a series of works that Haring executed in 1987, which include large-scale metal masks and paintings—many of which are uniquely on canvas—limited to a palette of black and primary colors. Moving away from his quintessential vibrant and Day-Glo hues, this series represents a more minimalist style of painting, reflecting the multiplicity of Haring’s practice. Many of which were exhibited at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York in 1987, these works pay homage to the primitivist and modernist tradition pioneered by Picasso, Braque and Brancusi that Haring admired. These styles would take up great influence in Haring’s oeuvre, using abstracted lines to render his figures in bold colors. Rendered in Haring’s characteristic confident lines and its subject pared down to its most basic features, the present work evokes a unique personality that contrasts with Haring’s more typical iconography of anonymous graphic figures. Employing a more realistic style for this portrait than in others from the series, the layered representation creates a dynamic composition within an otherwise flat picture plane that celebrates Haring and Adolfo’s friendship.
Red-Yellow-Blue #9, 1987
Red-Yellow-Blue #9, 1987
Sotheby’s New-York: 11 March 2022
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 378,000
Red-Yellow-Blue #9 | Contemporary Curated | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
KEITH HARING
Red-Yellow-Blue #9, 1987
Oil and acrylic on canvas
36×36 inches (91.4 x 91.4 cm)
“The public has a right to art” wrote Keith Haring in his brief manifesto that encompassed his deep commitment to changing the social politics of art. Painting truth to power, Haring’s interest in semiotics evolved into the creation of a visual language that emboldened New York’s counter-culture. Graffiti, hip-hop and the underground New York scene are evoked through witty compositions of energetic figurines that vibrate with incomparable dynamism. Criticizing the art market’s elitism as well as the self-referential nature of its art, Haring looked to the city around him for inspiration. He portrayed the experience of the marginalized masses in a pictorial language that resembled the urban landscape. In doing so, his works provoked viewers into action and ultimately garnered universal admiration.
Keith Haring’ Broadway Studio, New-York, June 1987
With an incomparable drive for artistic exploration in his later years, Haring, like Picasso and other Modern artists before him, ventures into the diverse artistic language of the African continent. Fascinated by the geometrical construction of African masks, Red, Yellow, Blue #9 mimics the use of solid abstraction while preserving his signature dynamic line to compose a figure. The portrait is delineated through the interaction between negative and positive spaces in specific colors. Similarly to Mondrian, Miró, and Calder, Haring works primarily with strong lines and primary colors to render the face – imbuing it with simulated motion through its vigorously distorted geometric shapes. On a black background reminiscent of his early subway station chalk drawings, he presents us with a figure that looks back at the viewer in palpable defiance. Red, Yellow, Blue #9 is a manifestation of Haring’s distinctive creativity and personal ethos.
Red, Yellow, Blue #22, 1987
Red, Yellow, Blue #22, 1987
Koller Zurich: 3 December 2016
Estimated: CHF 300,000 – 400,000
CHF 408,500 / USD 404,215
KEITH HARING Red, Yellow, Blue #22. 1987.
KEITH HARING (Reading 1958–1990 New York City)
Red, Yellow, Blue #22, 1987
Acrylic and oil on canvas
29-1/2 x 29-1/2 inches (75×75 cm)
Signed, with the artist’s signet
Titled, dated and dedicated on the reverse:
‘RED-YELLOW-BLUE #22 Jan. 12. 87 K. Haring FOR FERDINAND Keith.’
In the mid 80s Haring spent some time in Paris, where, amongst other places, he often spent time working in the studio of his friend George Condo. At that time Condo was working on extended canvases, endless automatic works in which every part of the canvas was filled with small figures and other objects. Keith was also influenced by these pictures and this style of composition and produced his own densely crafted works. Condo writes about this period in Paris: “Keith opened up a new direction in painting, and it was interesting for him to come to Paris. He was thinking in terms of Calder-like, Léger-like large colour surfaces, which he then covered with drawings, and in leaving a white space around the forms… he began to combine specific pictures with one another, broke the margins a bit and made them look more painted and less graphic…He made a couple of things in the style of the Cubist period, but then introduced his graffiti-like approach. Keith wanted to keep the abstract language of Léger, Kandinsky and Klee and definitely the black and white sculptures of Dubuffet” (cit. George Condo in Ditch, Jeffrey/Geiss, Susanne/Gruen, Julia: Keith Haring. New York 2008)
These new approaches and influences are very clearly present in the work offered at auction here, as well as the entire series “Red Yellow Blue”. The series was painted from 11 to 13 January 1987 and comprises 26 pictures, which were later shown at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. Our picture came shortly afterwards, for the birth of André Heller’s son, from his collection, and therefore bears the dedication “FOR FERDINAND Keith”.
Red-Yellow-Blue #11, 1987
Red-Yellow-Blue #11, 1987
Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2014
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 545,000
KEITH HARING
Red-Yellow-Blue #11, 1987
Acrylic on canvas
72×60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled and dated Jan 11. 1987 on the overlap