Aug 17, 2023 - Sale 2644

Sale 2644 - Lot 275

Price Realized: $ 81,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 40,000

KEITH HARING (1958 - 1990)


Silence = Death.
Color screenprint on smooth wove paper. 840x840 mm; 33x33 inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered 152/200 in pencil, lower right, and with an iguana blind stamp, lower left. Published by George Mulder Fine Arts, New York, with the copyright ink stamp verso, for the Arts Outreach Fund for AIDS. 1989.

A very good impression with strong colors. Littmann 152.

Haring was able to leverage his celebrity to support causes and activist groups, like ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. The sale of his art and merchandise, was among the first of the organization's sources of fundraising. The present screenprint, Silence = Death, was created by Haring as a fundraiser for the Arts Outreach Fund for AIDS, using ACT UP's slogan and iconic pink triangle, which was originally used by the Nazis to identify and persecute homosexuals. The logo was created by the art collective, Silence = Death Project, co-founded by artist and activist Avram Finkelstein, in 1987 as a poster campaign. The logo was later donated to ACT UP, of which Finkelstein was also a founding member.