Name: Bayer Suite 2
Brand: Keith Haring
Rating: 4.9 (228 reviews)

Meaning & Analysis

This signed offset lithograph from 1982 is a limited edition of 70 from Keith Haring’s Bayer Suite series. Showing two genderless figures running up a set of stairs from either side, Bayer Suite 2 is symmetrical in composition, with a glowing stick at the top as the print’s focal point. Thick, red lines radiate from the central stick to reveal it as a mysterious source of power that draws the figures towards it. Haring injects the print with a sense of dynamism and movement by using multiple dotted lines on the stairs, giving the print a kinetic energy.

Haring's Bayer Suite series was commissioned by Bayer AG in 1982 on the occasion of the release of the heart medication ‘Sali-Adalat’. Consisting of six different lively scenes depicted in Haring’s trademark figurative style, each print focuses on the theme of movement and the heart.

Across the series, Haring limits his colour palette to black, red and white, producing a highly simplified and stylised set of works. The simplistic form and positive visual language of Bayer Suite 2 recalls the artist’s early subway drawings, where he spent his days drawing in white chalk on the empty advertising panels of the New York subway system.