Keith Haring

£8,000-£12,000Value
Indicator

$15,000-$23,000 Value Indicator

$14,000-$21,000 Value Indicator

¥70,000-¥110,000 Value Indicator

€9,500-€14,000 Value Indicator

$80,000-$120,000 Value Indicator

¥1,510,000-¥2,270,000 Value Indicator

$10,000-$15,000 Value Indicator

9% AAGR

AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.

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Track auction value trend

The value of Keith Haring’s Apocalypse 4 (signed) is estimated to be worth between £8,000 and £12,000. This screenprint has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 9%. This work has a steady auction history, having been sold 8 times since its initial sale on 12th December 2001. In the last 12 months, the average selling price was £8,187, with a total of 2 works sold. Over the past five years, the hammer price has ranged from £6,500 in August 2020 to £9,575 in September 2023. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 90.

Auction Date

Auction House

Artwork

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

September 2023

Sotheby's London - United Kingdom

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

May 2023

Uppsala Auktionskammare - Sweden

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

March 2023

Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

July 2021

Dorotheum, Vienna - Austria

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

August 2020

Forum Auctions London - United Kingdom

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

May 2016

Artcurial - France

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

October 2003

Christie's London - United Kingdom

Apocalypse 4 - Signed Print

Meaning & Analysis

This signed screen print in colours from 1988 is a limited edition of 90 from Keith Haring’s Apocalypse series. Apocalypse 4 shows a bright red monstrous figure with the head of Saint Fabiola. Haring populates the scene with demonic creatures and troubling satanic symbols.

Apocalypse 4 is one of the more unusual prints from Haring’s Apocalypse series featuring a troublesome half-human, half-monster as its central subject. Haring uses collage to embed a 19th century portrait of Saint Fabiola into the print and form the head of this grotesque creature. Fabiola was a nurse and Roman matron who renounced all earthly pleasures to devote her immense wealth to helping the poor and sick. Apocalypse 4 is exemplary of the way Haring appropriates historical imagery and high culture to provoke dialogue on crucial social issues of his lifetime, in this case the 1980s AIDS crisis.

Fabiola is depicted by Haring as a maternal figure with multiple breasts, nursing a misshapen and unsightly baby. It is uncertain as to whether the central figure is attempting to help the sick, those suffering from AIDS related illnesses, or whether she is perpetuating the surrounding chaos. The ‘devil sperm’ motif appears, swimming out of Fabiola’s mouth, thus alluding that she too has been reduced by the disease.

Two of Haring’s most cited works of influence, Dante’s Inferno and Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, come to the forefront in this image. A ravaged cityscape looms over the top of the print and falls down a funnel rendered in thick, dark ink. Hideously deformed beasts populate the scene and a group of human figures in Fabiola’s monstrous hand are being tortured. Dante and Bosch’s works are famous for their moralistic tone and Haring is citing these works, in his distinct cynical approach, to present a dire warning on the perils of sexual joy.