Keith Haring Untitled (Red and Black Woodcut) For Sale

Untitled is a woodcut created by Haring in 1983. An impressive tableau of two dancing figures against an array of stylised, hieroglyphic lines, the work is emblematic of Haring’s distinctive, graffiti-influenced style. 

Articulated in thick, red lines, both of Haring’s signature minimalist figures fall backwards. The sea of crosses, squiggles and dotted marks that overwhelm their surrounding space form a visual alphabet of fluid, gestural characters that inject the work with potent energy. In the present work, the theme of movement emerges from the artist’s interplay of colour and line: for art critic Ulrike Gehring, ‘Haring places the psychologically perceived appearance of colours in opposition to their materially limited three-dimensionality'.  

Devoid of direct representation, the components of Untitled are at once universal symbols and part of Haring’s unique visual lexicon, appearing time and time again throughout the artist’s corpus. Crossed ‘X’ signs, seen here, often point to the targeting of victims and violence, as well as the beams above the stick figure’s head that were made famous in Haring’s ‘Radiant babies’. Yet the impact of the work, and indeed the broad-reaching appeal of the artist, is due to its inherent accessibility. In Haring’s own words: “There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines, that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.”