Keith Haring
(1958-1990)
Keith Haring was born in Kutztown, Pennsylvania in 1958 and moved to New York City in 1976 to study at the School of Visual Arts. In New York, Haring developed his trademark, graffiti-inspired style that has become integral in contemporary, popular culture. During the 1980s, he found a space for expression in the New York subways, where he created marker drawings on walls and advertisements. These drawings would eventually evolve into paintings, large-scale murals and varied art objects in which interlocking, cartoon-style figures would interact in often fantastic fashion. Haring’s involvement in the New York club culture of the 1970s and 1980s deeply influenced his work, providing him with motifs and imagery from contemporary life that he included throughout his bold, colorful compositions. Haring further blended the boundaries between high and low art when he opened The Pop Shop, where he sold multiple products with what became popular motifs. After he was diagnosed with AIDS in the latter part of the 80s, Haring's work became a politically charged vehicle used to promote awareness.
Before his death in 1990, Keith Haring exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibitions were held at the Albertina in Vienna in 2018, the de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2014, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France in 2008, and at the Fundacion Caixa Galicia in Ferrol, Spain in 2007. He also had exhibitions in major institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and the Kunsthalle in Cologne. In 2008 after ten years of research Rizzoli published a comprehensive monograph of Haring’s work, which is closely based on the concept the artist himself wanted to publish before his death.
