Name: Growing 3
Brand: Keith Haring
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Keith Haring's Growing 3 (signed) is estimated to be worth between £35,000 and £50,000. This screenprint, created in 1988, has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 6%. This is a rare artwork with an auction history of 13 total sales since its entry to the market in April 2006. In the last 12 months, there have been no sales, however, in the last five years, the hammer price has ranged from £33,246 in September 2021 to £55,298 in November 2022. The average return to the seller over the last five years has been £35,018. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 100.

Meaning & Analysis

This signed screen print from 1988 is a limited edition of 100 from Keith Haring’s Growing series. Growing 3 is a print that shows two figures conjoined at the hip by a target symbol in the centre of the image, depicted in rounded yellow lines against a black backdrop. There is a clear focus on pattern across the entire image and the symmetry of the composition organically develops outwards from the centre. As the Growing Series progresses, it is unclear where some figures begin and end as Haring’s compositions become more complex and interconnected.

Haring’s use of symmetry along a vertical central axis and abundance of form marks a clear affinity with Australian Aboriginal and Aztec art. Across the image Haring creates concentric circles, curving, organic lines, figures and small patterns, bringing them into an abstract pictorial system that moves and flows with the viewer’s eye. Indeed, Haring’s focus on pattern makes this work distinctly ‘primitive’ in both a technical and stylistic sense, much like that of the European Modernists like Klee and Matisse.

Growing 3 evokes a clear sense of collectivism, working together and positive energy as a means to make a political statement on the culture of individualism in 1980s capitalist America. The figures seem to dance across the page, moving against complex patterns, providing the image with a rhythmic character that sparks joy in the viewer.