In the summer of 1985, Keith Haring arrived in Copenhagen for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Homo Decorens. While his visit was brief, it resulted in one of the most extraordinary prints of his career, and the largest he would ever make.
Haring had just completed a mural for the museum when he met Danish master printer Niels Borch Jensen. That same day, Jensen had just set up his first large-scale printing press in the studio, which would later become BORCH Editions. In the spirit of spontaneous collaboration, the two decided to test the press the very next morning, with the goal of creating the biggest print they could.
Haring showed up to the studio, sat on the floor, and began drawing directly onto the copper plates without any preliminary sketches. “He started with the figure’s shoulders and built the motif from there,” Jensen recalls. “It only took him a few hours to complete all three plates.” The resulting work, Untitled (Medusa), became Borch Jensen’s first large-scale print project and a milestone in Haring’s printmaking practice.
Measuring over 54 Inches high and nearly 95 Inches wide, the aquatint print is both technically ambitious and thematically rich. Its central figure, a tangled creature with many heads, channels the mythology of Medusa through Haring’s distinctive visual language.
The print’s mythological reference of Medusa carries layers of symbolism. Traditionally portrayed as a monster capable of turning men to stone, Medusa has also been reclaimed as a symbol of female rage, victimhood, and power. In Haring’s version, there is no single gaze, no singular identity. The heads multiply, each a character in their own right, reflecting the artist’s fascination with shared experiences.
Beyond its mythic symbolism, Medusa Head exemplifies Haring’s understanding of scale and immediacy. Despite its size, the work feels urgent and alive, a quality made all the more impressive considering the speed at which it was created. The print was executed in an edition of just 24, making it one of Haring’s rarest and most sought-after works on paper.
Published by BORCH Editions in 1986, Medusa Head stands as a testament to the power of collaboration and the artist’s intuitive genius. It offers a snapshot of Haring at the height of his creative output, blending his bold aesthetic with deep social, political, and mythological undertones.