Painted in 1987 at the height of Keith Haring’s tragically short career, Red-Yellow-Blue #16 (Portrait of Adolpho) is an intimate and distinctive portrait of Haring’s last studio assistant, Adolfo Arena. Adolfo was first hired by Haring to work at the Pop Shop on Lafayette Street in the spring of 1986, having recently graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology. The following year, Adolfo replaced Haring’s studio assistant at the time and worked with him until the end of his life. Adolfo passionately recalled his position: “The way I saw the job was, like, 'Keith, you paint and let me do the rest.' That meant I would even be willing to brawl with anyone who wasn’t supposed to be in the studio… I tried keeping myself in tune to what went down at the studio, being alert about things and intuiting what was needed before Keith asked for it. This showed him I was on my toes.”
Red-Yellow-Blue #16 (Portrait of Adolpho) belongs to a series of works that Haring executed in 1987, which include large-scale metal masks and paintings—many of which are uniquely on canvas—limited to a palette of black and primary colors. Moving away from his quintessential vibrant and Day-Glo hues, this series represents a more minimalist style of painting, reflecting the multiplicity of Haring’s practice. Many of which were exhibited at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York in 1987, these works pay homage to the primitivist and modernist tradition pioneered by Picasso, Braque and Brancusi that Haring admired. These styles would take up great influence in Haring’s oeuvre, using abstracted lines to render his figures in bold colors.
Rendered in Haring’s characteristic confident lines and its subject pared down to its most basic features, the present work evokes a unique personality that contrasts with Haring’s more typical iconography of anonymous graphic figures. Employing a more realistic style for this portrait than in others from the series, the layered representation creates a dynamic composition within an otherwise flat picture plane that celebrates Haring and Adolfo’s friendship.
