News Paintings, furniture, and photos that the artist gifted to his childhood best friend are being exhibited ahead of an auction at Sotheby's.

Keith Haring at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1983 (photo courtesy Kermit Oswald)

A singular, tri-color self-portrait; a bright-yellow baby’s crib adorned with whimsical caricatures; a painting of a figure falling down a blue flight of stairs. Keith Haring gifted these intimate works and many others to his childhood best friend and fellow artist, Kermit Oswald, over the course of his lifetime.

For four decades, Oswald has held a trove of rarely seen works by his dear friend, created between 1977 and 1989, including one of only six self-portraits known to exist of the artist.…