Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American player whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His vivacious imagery has “become a widely recognized visual language”. Much of his con includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism by using the images to innovative for secure sex and AIDS awareness. In complement to solo gallery exhibitions, Haring participated in renowned national and international intervention 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 additional stylized images upon blank black advertising spaces. After attainment public recognition, he created colorful larger scale murals, many commissioned. He produced higher than 50 public artworks along with 1982 and 1989, many were created voluntarily for hospitals, day care centers, and schools. In 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop as an further explanation of his work. His later fake often conveyed political and societal themes— anti-crack, anti-apartheid, safe sex, homosexuality and AIDS—through his own iconography.
Haring died on February 16, 1990, of AIDS-related complications. In 2014, Haring was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco, a walk of fame noting LGBTQ people who have “made significant contributions in their fields.” In 2019, Haring was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Stonewall Inn.
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