Keith Haring

Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s.

His animated imagery has “become a widely recognised visual language”. Much of his work includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism by using the images to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness.

In addition to solo gallery exhibitions, he participated in renowned national and international group shows such as documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial in New York, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. The Whitney Museum held a retrospective of his art in 1997.

Haring’s popularity grew from his spontaneous drawings in New York City subways—chalk outlines of figures, dogs, and other stylized images on blank black advertising spaces.After gaining public recognition, he created colourful larger scale murals, many commissioned.

Between 1982 and 1989, he produced over 50 public artworks, many created voluntarily for hospitals, daycare centres, and schools. In 1986, he opened the Pop Shop as an extension of his work. His later work often conveyed political and societal themes—anti-crack, anti-apartheid, safe sex, homosexuality, and AIDS—through his own iconography.

Haring died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990.