Kenny Scharf, In the Beginning Red (2019)

Kenny Scharf, In the Beginning Red, 2019

Six-color lithograph on BFK Rives 300gsm paper. Edition of 99.

36 3/5 × 29 1/2 in (93 × 75 cm).

Colorful, cartoonish faces and imagined creatures populate Kenny Scharf’s fantastical murals, paintings, sculptures, and installations. On Scharf’s canvases, these figures careen against one another, as well as galactic landscapes and still-life elements such as vases. The artist received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts. He found success in New York’s 1980s East Village art scene alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, with whom he shared a mentor—Andy Warhol. Scharf has exhibited in New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, Milan, and Zürich. His work belongs in the collections of The Bass, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.