Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990) developed a visual language of fluid, uniform lines and repeating images such as the barking dog and the radiant baby.,He began with chalk drawings on empty advertising panels in New York subway stations and went on to paint murals around the world.,Activism ran through his practice, from protests against apartheid to awareness of the crack epidemic and the AIDS crisis.
Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Kutztown.He moved to New York in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Arts.,At Club 57 he made friends with fellow artists including Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat.His 1982 solo show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery included a basement Blacklight Room of Day-Glo enamel paintings made in collaboration with LA II, also known as Angel Ortiz.His second solo show there, in December 1983, included large sculptures he called “totems”. These are flat wooden cutouts whose figures he inscribed with a router.
In 1986 Haring opened the Pop Shop in SoHo, selling T-shirts, badges, magnets and prints at everyday prices.Tate Modern reconstructed the shop in “Pop Life: Art in a Material World”.He also painted more than fifty large public murals, often in hospitals and children's centers, in cities including Melbourne, Paris, Pisa and Barcelona. His Crack Is Wack mural on New York's FDR Drive warned against crack cocaine. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and established the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989 to raise money for AIDS organizations and children's programs.In Rome, a few months before his death, he spent three days working on a digital Paintbox. He made more than 70 digital artworks and three animations there, including Pisa 1989.
A 2026 exhibition at the Brant Foundation surveyed his work from 1980 to 1983.,“Keith Haring in 3D” at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, billed by the museum as the first show on his sculpture practice, covers masks, totems, skateboards, clothing, boomboxes and painted found objects.,
