Icons (complete set of 5)

Five symbols, alone

Icons is a portfolio of five screenprints, each presenting one symbol from Keith Haring's visual vocabulary on its own sheet, in the flat, saturated colors of commercial advertising. Haring had spent a decade repeating these figures in crowded compositions; here each one stands alone, in what one description calls an acknowledgment of the fame the symbols had attained.

The sources agree on four of the five: the Radiant Baby, the Barking Dog, the Angel and the Three-Eyed Monster. They disagree on the fifth. One market guide and one dealer's collector guide name a Flying Devil; the same dealer's catalog page for the series, and its description of the companion White Icons set, name an X Man instead. This page leaves the question open.

Several of the figures reach back to Haring's youth. In his early teens he was involved with the Jesus movement, and writers on Icons read the Radiant Baby, the Angel and the Devil figure as religious imagery reshaped to speak to the concerns of his generation, including a critique of church and government during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1980s New York.

From chalk to Pop Shop

Keith Allen Haring was born May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Kutztown, the son of an engineer and amateur cartoonist. He moved to New York's Lower East Side in 1978 to study painting at the School of Visual Arts.

Beginning in December 1980 he drew in white chalk on the black paper that covered unused advertising panels in subway stations. He called the subway his 'laboratory.' The Radiant Baby, a crawling infant giving off rays of light, became his best-known symbol and his tag: he used it to sign his work as a subway artist. Barking dogs and dancing figures filled the same panels.

Fame came fast. In 1982 he showed at documenta 7 in Kassel alongside Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, and that October he held a solo show in SoHo with the New York dealer who would later publish Icons. Between 1982 and 1989 he painted more than 50 public murals.

In April 1986 he opened the Pop Shop in SoHo, selling shirts, posters and other items at reasonable prices. 'My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art,' he said. He later stopped drawing in the subways, in part because people were taking the drawings and selling them.

The last year

Haring was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and with AIDS in the autumn of 1988. He used his imagery in his last years to speak about his illness and to raise awareness. In 1989 he set up the Keith Haring Foundation to fund AIDS organizations and children's programs and to maintain his artwork. 'My life is my art, it's intertwined,' he told a reporter in late 1989.

He kept working at a pace few healthy artists could match: a mural in Barcelona in February 1989, a 480-foot mural with nearly 500 students in Chicago that May, Tuttomondo in Pisa in June. His last exhibition opened in Paris in January 1990.

On February 16, 1990, Haring died of AIDS-related complications at his apartment on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village. He was 31. On May 4, 1990, what would have been his 32nd birthday, a memorial at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine drew Mayor David Dinkins and the actor Dennis Hopper among the speakers.

Icons is dated 1990, the year of his death. The sets that have come to auction are signed not by Haring but by the executor of his estate, on a stamped certificate; one catalog records the certificate on set 55/250 as dated 6/29/90, four months after he died. That is why some writers describe the suite as his final, authorized summation of the symbols.

Reading the sheets

Each of the five sheets measures about 21 by 25 inches. One auction catalog gives 530 by 635 mm, another 53.5 by 63.5 cm, and a dealer guide 53.3 by 63.5 cm. The prints are screenprinted in colors with embossing on Arches Cover paper. One catalog names the printer as Studio Heinrici.

The edition is 250 sets, plus 25 artist's proof sets. Authentic sets described at auction carry, on the back of each sheet, a stamped certificate of authenticity signed by Julia Gruen as executor of the Keith Haring Estate and numbered in pencil, plus the blindstamp of the New York publisher. Collectors should not expect a Haring signature on these sheets.

The standard reference is Klaus Littmann's Keith Haring: Editions on Paper 1982-1990, published in Stuttgart in 1993, where the set appears on pages 170 and 171.

A companion suite, White Icons, presents the same motifs in a contrasting color scheme in a much smaller edition. It is a different object from the Icons set tracked here.

Sets at auction

One market tracker counts nine auction sales of the complete Icons set, with hammer prices ranging from GBP 60,515 in December 2025 to GBP 98,063 in May 2025. The series as a whole, including single prints, has more than 60 auction appearances.

Set 19/250, framed, was offered at auction in London on September 17, 2019, with an estimate of GBP 30,000 to 50,000. Set 111/250 sold in an online auction run from London that closed March 27, 2025, for GBP 94,500 against an estimate of GBP 60,000 to 80,000.

On May 16, 2025, set 55/250 was offered in New York as part of a sale of works from the collection of the dealer who had published it, with an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. A dealer's guide reports that it sold for $165,100. A set sold in Cologne in December 2025 at a lower level.

Single prints from the suite also trade separately; one dealer calls the Barking Dog the most sought-after single print in the set.

A language anyone can read

Haring's bold, graphic imagery has, in one description, 'become a widely recognized visual language,' and Icons is that language reduced to its alphabet. The Radiant Baby that once signed subway drawings given away for free remains his most recognized symbol.

The Pop Shop stayed open after his death until 2005, with proceeds going to the Keith Haring Foundation. The foundation he set up in 1989 was created to fund AIDS organizations and children's programs and to look after his work.

His ashes were scattered in a field near Bowers, Pennsylvania, just south of Kutztown, where he grew up drawing with his father, an amateur cartoonist.

The numbers

Medium

Set of five screenprints in colors with embossing on Arches Cover paper

Dimensions

Each sheet about 21 x 25 in.; given as 530 x 635 mm, 53.5 x 63.5 cm and 53.3 x 63.5 cm by different sources

Catalogue raisonne

Littmann pp. 170-171

Edition

250 sets, plus 25 artist's proof sets

Signatures

Estate certificate of authenticity signed by Julia Gruen and numbered in pencil on the back of each sheet; publisher's blindstamp

Current owner

Sets are in private hands; no public collection holding is stated in the sources consulted

Timeline

1. May 4, 1958

   Keith Allen Haring is born in Reading, Pennsylvania.

2. 1978

   Haring moves to New York to study painting at the School of Visual Arts.

3. Dec 1980

   Haring begins chalk drawings on unused subway advertising panels; the Radiant Baby becomes his tag.

4. Oct 1982

   Haring holds a solo show in SoHo with the New York dealer who would later publish Icons.

5. Apr 1986

   The Pop Shop opens in SoHo.

6. 1987

   Haring is diagnosed with HIV.

7. 1988

   Haring is diagnosed with AIDS in the autumn.

8. 1989

   Haring establishes the Keith Haring Foundation.

9. Feb 16, 1990

   Haring dies of AIDS-related complications in New York, aged 31.

10. May 4, 1990

    A memorial is held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on what would have been his 32nd birthday.

11. Jun 29, 1990

    Date on the estate's certificate of authenticity on Icons set 55/250.

12. 1993

    Klaus Littmann's catalogue of Haring's printed works is published in Stuttgart, listing Icons on pages 170-171.

13. 2005

    The Pop Shop closes.

14. Sep 17, 2019

    Icons set 19/250 is offered at auction in London, estimated at GBP 30,000 to 50,000.

15. Mar 27, 2025

    Icons set 111/250 sells online from London for GBP 94,500.

16. May 16, 2025

    Icons set 55/250, from the collection of its publisher, is offered in New York with a $80,000 to $120,000 estimate; a dealer reports a $165,100 result.

17. Dec 2025

    A complete Icons set sells at auction in Cologne.

The world in 1990

• Feb 11, 1990

  James 'Buster' Douglas knocks out Mike Tyson to win the world heavyweight title.

• Mar 18, 1990

  Thieves posing as police steal twelve paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the largest art theft in history.

• Apr 8, 1990

  Ryan White, the teenager expelled from school after contracting AIDS, dies at 18.

• Apr 25, 1990

  The Hubble Space Telescope is placed into orbit.

• Jun 17, 1990

  Nelson Mandela begins a tour of North America, visiting eight U.S. cities.

• Jul 26, 1990

  President George H. W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act.

• Aug 2, 1990

  Iraq invades Kuwait.

• Sep 12, 1990

  The two German states and the four wartime powers sign the treaty that clears the way for German reunification.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Icons (complete set of 5) is number 51 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (37 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Radiant Baby was Haring's tag: he used the crawling, glowing infant to sign his subway drawings.
• Icons sets are not signed by Haring. The sets described at auction carry a certificate signed by the executor of his estate, Julia Gruen.
• Sources disagree on the fifth image in the set: some name a Flying Devil, others an X Man.
• Haring stopped drawing in the subways partly because people were removing the chalk drawings and selling them.
• Set 55/250, which sold in New York in May 2025, came from the collection of the dealer who had published the edition 35 years earlier.