Keith Haring Pop Shop III (Plate 1), 1987 is the first silkscreen print in the artist’s Pop Shop III portfolio of 1989. This print features Haring’s signature thick black outlining style and brightly saturated colors. The first figure in orange stands on the right side of the composition with its feet planted firmly on the ground and bent forward as it works to extract the second of the two figures from a grey mechanical structure. Haring adds short thick black lines to imply action and motion in this print. The artist developed his own pictorial language through simple visual symbols. Haring was passionate about accessibility and he wanted every person to not only see his work but understand it. His visual language reminds us of childlike doodles and simple communicative drawings.

Haring created multiple Pop Shop portfolios during the span of his career, and derived the name from his original Pop Shop that he opened in a retail space in downtown New York in 1986. This shop was opened with the intention of making the artist’s work accessible to the general public, and this accessibility is an explicitly Pop sentiment.

Keith Haring’s Pop Shop III (Plate 1), 1987 is part of a portfolio of four screenprints in the artist’s Pop Shop III portfolio of 1987. This body of work depicts some of the artist’s iconic figures in a limited palette of blue, pink, black and yellow. Also featured in this portfolio are Pop Shop III (Plate 2), Pop Shop III (Plate 3) and Pop Shop III (Plate 4).

Created in 1988, this silkscreen is hand-signed by Keith Haring (Reading, 1958 – New York, 1990) in pencil in the center right image and numbered from the edition of 200 in pencil in the center right image.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:

Keith Haring Pop Shop III (Plate 1), from the Pop Shop III Portfolio, 1989 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the sale of the work).

1. Klaus Littman. Keith Haring: Editions on Paper 1982-1990, The Complete Printed Works. Hatje Cantz Publishers: New York, 1993. Listed on pg. 145 and illustrated on pg. 144 a.

2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this artwork.

About the Framing:

Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, Keith Haring Pop Shop III (Plate 1), from the Pop Shop III Portfolio, 1989 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.