23-295 20th Montreux Jazz 1986 Haring Warhol

Title: 20th Montreux Jazz Festival July 3rd – 19th 86. Marked on bottom left: design Andy Warhol + Keith Haring New York, art consultant Pierre Keller, copyright MTO Switzerland, silkscreen Albin Uldry Bern. Signed in the plate, Andy Warhol Keith Haring. 28 x 40 inches.

Celebrating twenty years of the Festival and Claude Nobs’s fiftieth birthday called for a very special poster indeed. Pierre Keller broght together Keith Haring and Andy Warhol for the first collaboration between the two New York icons. The day before Keller was due to return from New York with the finished poster, nothing was ready. Haring thus suggested that Warhol draw a series of staves, and positioned dancing figures between them that resemble musical notes. The two artists decided to paint the poster in red and yellow. “It’s very Swiss, and will remind people of Maggi seasoning,” Keller commented. The Festival’s artistic advisor was able to take the poster with him, with the typography and signatures of the two artists sent by UPS delivery a few days later.

In the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.