“What I’m trying to capture is always the same thing: human emotion, feelings. I think feelings reveal the truth of who we are and what we feel in the moment. Feelings change, and they’re really pretty deep — generally more visceral and more true than ideas.”
FACES
Faces marks ICONIC's first collaboration with Michael Hafftka, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice has spanned more than fifty years and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, SFMOMA, the National Gallery of Art, and the British Museum.
Comprising ninety-nine unique works, this collection draws from the full arc of Hafftka's career, from analog paintings of the 1970s through digital and animated pieces completed in 2025. Each work is a unique 1/1. Collectors of each edition will have the opportunity to claim a corresponding fine art print, the only print version of that specific work that will ever exist outside the artist's archive or an institutional collection.
ABOUT
FACES
“Creating has always felt like my thing. Before I understood what it meant to be an artist, I tried poetry, filmmaking, and photography, but I ultimately found my way to painting, and I have been doing it for fifty years.
My art has always centered on the human face. I am not interested in likeness or realism for its own sake. What I am after is something deeper, a portrait of humankind. I try to capture emotion because feelings reveal the truth of who we are. The distortion in my work is not simply stylistic. It reflects the uncertainty, fragility, and complexity of life itself.
Faces draws from fifty years of work, including paintings, watercolors, sculptures, etchings, and early computer drawings. Digital gave me the chance to bring these different parts of my practice together and make something entirely new. I wanted these ninety-nine works to feel cohesive, like a family of distinct human faces carrying different emotions and histories.
I was also inspired by the idea that a digital face could become a form of identity. Each of these faces carries a story, a memory, or a connection to someone I have known or loved. More than anything, I hope these works feel alive. I am trying to connect. I am trying to make something that speaks to people.”
ABOUT
MICHAEL HAFFTKA
Michael Hafftka's faces do not look like the people they depict. That is the point. For fifty years, Hafftka has been painting psychologically charged portraits that trade likeness for interior life, distorted, urgent images that carry grief, survival, and the cost of being visible. His painting "The Selecting Hand," created in memory of his Holocaust survivor parents, has been called "the Guernica of the Holocaust." His portrait of jazz musician Butch Morris hangs in SFMOMA. The people in his work are real: friends, musicians, curators, family members, many of whom are no longer alive. In Hafftka's words: "I'm not trying to make a picture of someone. I'm making a portrait of humankind."
Hafftka's method has always been accumulation across mediums. Oil, watercolor, etching, woodcut, sculpture, and, since 1996, digital works, he originally called "Computer Drawings" because the term "digital art" did not yet exist. He placed one in Modern Painters magazine in 1999, alongside Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. No one responded. The digital work sat unseen for twenty-five years before collectors recognized what he had been doing all along. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, SFMOMA, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the British Museum. He lives and works in Brooklyn, in the same studio where the practice began.
Digital + Physical
Collectors of Faces will have the exclusive opportunity to purchase a matching hand-signed, rendered on museum-quality Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper.
Print Details
Paper: Museum-quality Hahnemühle photo rag paper.
Signature: Signed by Michael Hafftka
Print Size: 18 × 18 in. / 45.72× 45.72 cm
Following the Digital release, Iconic will open a print claim portal where collectors can purchase their matching hand-signed print.
Buyers are responsible for any applicable import duties or VAT on their print purchase. Please allow up to 10 weeks for your print to arrive.
Faces by Michael Hafftka
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Collection Size
99 unique works.
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Purchase Price
$750 USD paid via ETH on OpenSea
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Print Price
$350 per print paid via ETH or credit card.
Available following the digital release.
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Release Date & Time
Wednesday, April 29th at 12PM EST
PRE-SALE
ICONIC Art Pass Holder Presale: April 27th to 29th
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Release Type
Blind Mint
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