Keith Haring - Contemporary Art London Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    Cologne, Galerie Paul Maenz, Keith Haring, May 3 - 30, 1984

  • Literature

    Gerd de Vries, ed., Paul Maenz Köln 1970–1980–1990. An Avant-garde Gallery
    and the Art of Our Time, Cologne, 1991, p. 128 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Vibrant, colourful, and aesthetically challenging, Untitled (Aztec Snake Godess) is a seminal work, touching upon Haring’s artistic and stylistic oeuvre to its fullest. Through shape and form, this painting is a prime example of the various cultures that had so profoundly influenced the artist’s body of work. In this Untitled piece from 1984, as the title reveals, Haring turns to the Aztec Culture for inspiration and finds himself visually recording it onto the canvas. This results in his use of specific stylistic features such as the crimson red concentric circles that are so reminiscent of the Aztec Empire. Together with his ‘Haringesque’ signature elements, such as the synthesis between line and colour, this work is monumental. It marks a shift in Haring’s painterly style, as his unique fusion between figuration and abstraction becomes more apparent – a fusion where ‘figure’ becomes distinct from the abstracted and ‘abstraction’ distinct from figuration, allowing each style to be powerful in its own way.

    Untitled (Aztec Snake Godess) is a painting that through its synergy and somewhat disjointed vocabulary oozes a sense of painterly harmony. It is a powerful work exemplifying Haring’s artistic awareness of symbolism and culture – it is a work that in its own right is a mesmerizing amalgamation of an historic past and an artistic presence.

  • Artist Biography

    Keith Haring

    American • 1958 - 1990

    Haring's art and life typified youthful exuberance and fearlessness. While seemingly playful and transparent, Haring dealt with weighty subjects such as death, sex and war, enabling subtle and multiple interpretations. 

    Throughout his tragically brief career, Haring refined a visual language of symbols, which he called icons, the origins of which began with his trademark linear style scrawled in white chalk on the black unused advertising spaces in subway stations. Haring developed and disseminated these icons far and wide, in his vibrant and dynamic style, from public murals and paintings to t-shirts and Swatch watches. His art bridged high and low, erasing the distinctions between rarefied art, political activism and popular culture. 

    View More Works

28

Untitled (Aztec Snake Goddess)

1984
Acrylic on muslin.
60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm).
Signed and dated “K.Haring, April 12-1984” on the overlap.

Estimate
£150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for £378,400

Contemporary Art

22 June 2007, 4pm & 5pm
London