Bayer Suite 3

Bayer Suite 3 is a lithograph from Keith Haring’s Bayer Suite series that was commissioned by Bayer AG in 1982 on the occasion of the release of the heart medication ‘Sali-Adalat’. The series includes some of Haring’s most recognisable pictograms, depicted in the artist’s trademark figurative style, and is limited to a colour palette of red, white and black.

Much like fellow graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Haring reuses particular symbols throughout his artistic oeuvre to produce a memorable pictorial language. The central figure of Bayer Suite 3 resembles Haring’s famous angel icon, a winged figure with its arms and legs spread outwards. The angel motif is demonstrative of the way Haring shaped religious source material to reflect contemporary concerns of his generation and is used repeatedly by Haring, in works such as Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1984) and Anti-Nuclear Rally (1982).

Overflowing with paradoxical themes like life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell, Haring may have used the angel motif as a sign of how Bayer’s new heart medication will drastically improve people’s lives. Haring uses red zig-zag lines radiating from the central figure, who appears to be dancing, to produce a print that is bursting with energy and vigour.