News

Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was raised in nearby Kutztown. At a very young age he developed a love for drawing, improving his cartooning skills with the help of his father and taking a deep interest in the popular culture around him and Walt Disney's films.

After graduating from high school in 1976, Haring frequented the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, a commercial arts school but disliking the prospect of becoming a commercial graphic artist he gave up his studies after two semester and decided to train and work on his own before having a solo exhibition of his work in 1978 at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center.

Haring moved to New York City the same year and pursued his studies at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). At the same time he mingled with some young artists who were freely working in the downtown streets and the subways. It was there that he became friends with some artists like Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the musicians, performance artists and graffiti writers belonging to this new art community.

Impressed by the innovation and energy shown by these artists who had decided to confront the public with their works, Haring was also inspired by the achievements of Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Alechinsky, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Robert Henri's manifesto The Art Spirit, which asserted the need of total independence for emerging artists. Haring thus sensed that it was essential to develop a king of simple graphic expression based on the primacy of the line to draw the attention of the public to his art.

In 1980, Haring found a highly effective medium that led him to communicate with the wider audience he desired, when he created drawings with chalk upon unused advertising panels covered with matte black paper in a subway station, which helped him achieve his first public attention. These drawings were his first recognized pieces of pop art. Around this time, "The Radiant baby" became his symbol. Between 1980 and 1985, Haring produced hundreds of these public drawings in rapid rhythmic lines. As a result his images became familiar to New York commuters, who often would stop to engage the artist when they encountered him at work. The subway became, as Haring said, a "laboratory" for working out his ideas and experimenting with his simple lines.

His bold lines, vivid colors, and active figures carried strong messages of life and unity. In 1981 he sketched his first chalk drawings on black paper and painted plastic, metal and found objects.

Between 1980 and 1989, Haring achieved international recognition and participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His first solo exhibition in New York.was held at the Westbeth Painters Space in 1981. In 1982, he met tremendous success with an immensely popular and highly acclaimed one-man exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Soho.

In 1984, Haring visited Australia and painted wall murals in Melbourne and Sydney and received a AU$1000 commission from the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art to create a mural, based on his graffiti designs, which temporarily replaced the water curtain at the National Gallery. He also visited and painted in Rio de Janeiro, the Paris Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis and Manhattan.

In April 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop, a retail store in Soho selling T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons and magnets bearing his images. Haring considered the shop to be an extension of his work and painted the entire interior of the store designed by himself and intended to allow people greater access to his work, which was now readily available on products at a low cost.

Haring also devoted much of his time to public works, which often carried social messages. He produced more than 50 public artworks between 1982 and 1989, in dozens of cities around the world, many of which were created for charities, hospitals, children's day care centers and orphanages. His most interesting projects were a mural created for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, a mural on the exterior of Necker Children's Hospital in Paris, France in 1987; and a mural painted on the western side of the Berlin Wall three years before it went down.

Keith Haring's statement: "I have been drawing since I was four years old. I learned to draw from my father, who would entertain me by inventing cartoon animals. Although he never pursued an artistic career, he encouraged me to continue drawing throughout my school years. Drawing became a way of commanding respect and communicatiing with people. When I was eighteen, my work, which had been primarily cartoon-oriented, became increasingly abstract and concerned with spontaneous action. I became interested in Eastern Calligraphy and the art of the Gesture. When I moved to New York City at the age of twenty, I started to experiment with drawing on paper that was so large that I had to stand inside the drawing. Although my work was still "Abstract" at this time, I became aware of the vast differences in people's responses to the work. Different people saw different things in the drawings. I remember most clearly an afternoon of drawing in a studio that large doors that opened onto Twenty-second Street. All kinds of people would stop and look at the huge drawing and many were eager to comment on their feelings toward it. This was the first time I realized how many people could enjoy art if they were given the chance. These were not the people I saw in the museums or in the galleries but a cross section of humanity that cut across all boundaries. This group of different people living and working together in harmony has always been my prime attraction to New York.