Lucky Strike is the Keith Haring portfolio that began as a cigarette commission and ended with a smoking skeleton. The commission came through Switzerland, where the prints were published in Geneva, and was arranged by the art consultant Pierre Keller, who had already brought Haring in to make posters for the 1983 Montreux Jazz Festival. Haring’s journal for 16 June 1987 has him starting the ink drawings first thing, each carrying a hand-drawn Lucky Strike logo, and finishing nine variations, five of which were chosen to be screenprinted: leaping, dancing figures in his most energetic line, arranged around the famous pack.
The tenth drawing never went to the client. Haring made a skeleton smoking a cigarette and gave it to a school to hang in Keller’s classroom, noting in his journal: “The man from Lucky Strike was not very amused, but I could care less.” Commentators read that last drawing as the activist showing through a commercial job, and see a parallel with Andy Warhol’s Ads of 1985 in bringing a household brand into the print room. For collectors, it is a brand commission with real story behind it, joyful on the surface and a little mischievous underneath, and one of the clearest records of how comfortably Haring moved between the street, the gallery and the world of advertising.
For more information or to buy Keith Haring Lucky Strike prints, contact our specialists via info@alexyellop.com. Discover more Keith Haring signed prints for sale or find out more about selling your Keith Haring prints.
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Keith Haring Lucky Strike Portfolio (Littmann PP. 77-79)
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Untitled 1–6 (1982) Portfolio
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Fertility Portfolio
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Montreux Jazz Festival
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Free South Africa
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Ludo
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Three Lithographs
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Andy Mouse
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Bad Boys
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Lucky Strike
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Untitled 1–4 (1987)
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Apocalypse
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Growing
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Pop Shop I
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Pop Shop II
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Pop Shop III
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Pop Shop IV
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Pop Shop V
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Pop Shop VI
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Chocolate Buddha
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Pyramid
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Stones
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The Story of Red and Blue
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The Valley
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Totem
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Untitled Etchings (1989)
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Blueprint Drawings
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Flowers
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Icons
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White Icons
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Single Prints
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