Name: The Story Of Red And Blue 5
Brand: Keith Haring
Rating: 4.9 (183 reviews)

The Story Of Red And Blue 5
Signed Print

Keith Haring

£2,200-£3,250 VALUE (EST.)

$4,000-$6,000 VALUE (EST.)

$3,700-$5,500 VALUE (EST.)

¥18,000-¥27,000 VALUE (EST.)

€2,500-€3,700 VALUE (EST.)

$21,000-$30,000 VALUE (EST.)

¥350,000-¥520,000 VALUE (EST.)

$2,700-$3,950 VALUE (EST.)

43% AAGR

This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.

Auction Date

Auction House

Artwork

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

April 2021

Larsen Gallery - United States

The Story Of Red And Blue 5 - Signed Print

March 2017

Bonhams Knightsbridge - United Kingdom

The Story Of Red And Blue 5 - Signed Print

June 2014

Karl & Faber - Germany

The Story Of Red And Blue 5 - Signed Print

May 2013

Kaupp Auktions House - Germany

The Story Of Red And Blue 5 - Signed Print

Meaning & Analysis

The Story Of Red And Blue 5 is part of a series of prints called The Story Of Red And Blue by Keith Haring from 1989. This signed colour lithograph is a limited edition of 90.

Presented in the form of a children’s story book, this series is representative of Haring’s desire to create a visual language that appealed to both children and adults alike. Throughout the series he limits his colour palette to bright red and blue and renders each image in his distinctive linear style with black rounded lines.

The Story Of Red And Blue 5 shows an egg-shaped figure outlined in thick red brushstrokes, it’s smiling face depicted as a single-line drawing. Appearing to sit happily on a brick wall, Haring is deliberately referring to the character from the famous children’s nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. Throughout the series Haring loosely refers to a variety of children’s fictional characters so as to make clear his allusion to the notion of a storybook.

Across the first half of the series, each print alternates in colour between red and blue and by the end of the series the two colours appear together in the prints. In each print Haring uses simplified and generic pictograms to produce the effect of a children’s story book without a sensical storyline, where instead the story seems to focus abstractly on the colours red and blue.