Keith Haring The Story of Red and Blue Portfolio For Sale: Facts | Meaning | Market Demand

The Story of Red and Blue is a suite of twenty lithographs and a title page, made in 1989 in the style of a children’s storybook. Haring’s cartoon style came from his childhood. His father drew cartoons, and he told Rolling Stone in 1989 that he had been doing cartoons, creating characters and stories, since he was little. The plates draw on nursery-rhyme figures alongside invented ones, in black line with red and blue as the only colours. Although the line is loose and childlike, the content is at times darker and more explicit than a storybook would be, with a pig with unsettling teeth and a naked woman covering herself, so the suite is only on the surface intended for children.

The two colours alternate through the first half of the suite, begin to merge in the nineteenth plate and are combined in the last, in which a hand holds an egg. In the summer of 1989 Haring described the point he had reached in his work in terms of a story, saying that when you are getting to the end of one, “you have to start pointing all the things toward one thing”. The portfolio was published by the Keith Haring Estate in New York, and it reflects his lifelong work with children, with whom he painted murals throughout his career, as well as his own playful side. For collectors, the suite pairs Haring’s playful line with a narrative that builds across twenty plates.

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  • Keith Haring The Story of Red and Blue (Littmann PP. 128-133)

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    • Keith Haring, The Story of Red and Blue Complete Portfolio (Littmann PP. 128-133), 1989
      Keith Haring, The Story of Red and Blue Complete Portfolio (Littmann PP. 128-133), 1989
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    The Keith Haring Market in 2026

    An Overview

    Keith Haring offers collectors a compelling combination of institutional standing, enormous global recognition and a finite supply of original editions. His work belongs to major museum collections, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, while his imagery is recognised far beyond the art world. For buyers, this brings the opportunity to collect an artist whose cultural importance is established and whose appeal reaches across generations and international markets.

    That recognition is supported by substantial auction results. Haring’s record stands at $6.54 million, while all 31 subway drawings from a major private collection sold for a combined $9.2 million in 2024, demonstrating exceptional demand for this important group. His prints continue to appear consistently at international auctions, providing an established history of transactions against which collectors can assess an acquisition.

    Throughout Haring’s printed output, collectors can own the imagery that made him recognised around the world, in original editions whose supply is fixed. That balance of broad cultural appeal and limited availability is central to the attraction. A carefully chosen print offers visual impact, a place within an important artist’s career and an established auction history against which to assess its price. For collectors, this creates an exciting opportunity to build a collection with both artistic substance and the potential for long-term appreciation.