Literature: Littmann pp. 54–55. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark.

Keith Haring was arguably one of the most influential visual artists of the late 20th century, as a defining part of the New York avant-garde in the 1980s. His dynamic technique originated from his work as a street artist, where he drew simple figures on blank advertising spaces in the underground train platforms. By expressing himself through an easily accessible imagery with bold lines and iconic symbols, Haring managed to explore complex themes founded on culturally subversive attitudes toward sexuality, gender, religion, and politics and to engage and encourage by-passers in an important dialogue about taboos excluded from the public debate. Apart from his visual endeavors he was also known to be a social activist fighting for gay rights, against racial discrimination and for AIDS awareness.

Since establishing his workshop in 1979, Niels Borch Jensen has achieved great recognition worldwide, and is respected for his knowledge and professional skills within the classic graphic techniques. Borch Jensen met Keith Haring in the summer of 1985, when Haring visited Copenhagen to contribute with a mural to the exhibition “Homo Decorens” at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and they decided to start collaborating.

“I had installed my first large press earlier that day, and we decided to meet in my studio the next day and make the biggest print we could. I prepared the plates, and when he arrived, he immediately started working, sitting on the floor, without any preliminary sketches or tracings. He started with the figure’s shoulders and built the motive from there. It only took him a few hours to finish all three plates.” (Niels Borch Jensen from BORCH Editions) Medusa Head is a modern reinterpretation of the Greek tale of Medusa, a terrifying creature whose hair consisted of snakes and with a look capable of turning bystanders into stone. Haring, who witnessed the deadly effects of AIDS, saw the mythical monster as an appropriate symbol of the disease that killed healthy young men in the blink of an eye. The work is rendered in Haring’s trademark linear style. It shows a hydra-like figure, whose broad neck branches out into seven tentacles with attached - and stuck - bouncing bodies that spread over the pictorial surface.

It became Niels Borch Jensen’s first large-scale print project, and the biggest print Keith Haring ever created.