American artist, a pop and graffiti artist who moved from a small section of Americana into the hip and hectic New York scene before burning himself out on the fast lane of the good life by age 31.
Raised in the small town of Kutztown PA, Keith Haring was the son of a communications supervisor and a housewife; three younger sisters. From the time he was a boy, he loved drawing and knew, by his teens, that he wanted to be an artist. His drawings were often abstract, with shapes and lines that flowed into forms. During school, he hung out with druggies and trouble-makers until he realized both his independence and his homosexuality. Finding his own way, he wrote, “I was happy, because I suddenly found that my art was blossoming along with my sexuality.”
Keith gave his first solo show at age 20 before moving to New York City to enter the School of Visual Arts. The chaotic stream of the New York art world energized him and he entered into feverish activity, immersing himself in the club scene, the punk-rock music scene and especially in the graffiti scene, which was blossoming on the streets and in the subway system of the city. By 1980, he evolved his own graffiti style and signature.
Haring was a natural for “performance art.” He did pieces involving poetry and video’s of himself acting-out various demented charades. He supported himself by working as a nightclub busboy, organizer of underground art shows, and as a gallery assistant. Critics called his first New York Show, October 1982, dazzling for its inventiveness and energy, and Haring suddenly became part of the city’s avant-garde. Almost immediately, Keith was invited to exhibit in Europe and Japan.
Everywhere, people responded to a style that combined the simple with the complex, that blended color and pattern to form dynamic images of great variety and originality. And it was a style that mysteriously suggested the artistic traditions of Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, and the Americas. Out of his social consciousness, Haring created works to promote literacy, support UNICEF, work against apartheid in South Africa, fight drug use, and spread awareness of AIDS by warning young people against unsafe sex.
The Haring mural began to appear all over the world along with large-scale outdoor sculptures that resembled huge, brightly colored children’s toys. In 1982, a giant billboard broadcast his famous Radiant Child image in Times Square. At the age of 27, he was invited to show the entire range of his work (1980-85) at two major European Art Museums.
Following the footsteps of his friend, Andy Warhol, Haring loved to surround himself with the beautiful people, the New York flamboyant underground that followed the party circuit. He opened a his “Pop Shop” in SoHo in 1986, where T-shirts, caps, buttons, prints, inflatable babies, and many of his other design products were sold.
Near the end of 1988, Haring noticed a purple spot on his leg that was a sign of an AIDS-related cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma. At first his HIV+ condition did not affect his work habits or his hectic travel schedule, but eventually he was barely able to hold a pen. He died of AIDS at 31, having a cardiac arrest on 2/16/1990 at precisely 4:40 AM, New York.
The Keith Haring Foundation was created in 1989 to continue Keith’s work with AIDS-related and children’s charities.
Link to Wikipedia biography