Keith Allen Haring
Keith Allen Haring was born May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Kutztown, a small Pennsylvania Dutch farm community. From early childhood, he drew avidly, beginning with cartoons and gradually progressing to more complex designs.In his teens, he saw a display of Andy Warhol's work and was impressed by that artist's flat lines, his use of pop icons and mundane objects, and his concept of mass-produced art. Warhol's exaltation of the commonplace would later be a key factor in Haring's art as well.He moved to New York City in 1980, in order to be in the center of both the art world and the gay community. Indeed, he began to create his own "graffiti," drawings of ambiguous-looking animals and a human figure on all fours, in the city's subways.By 1982, Haring was employed as an assistant to gallery owner Tony Shafrazi, who gave him his first major exhibition.During the mid-1980s, Haring's work brought him wealth and celebrity. His fans included Yoko Ono, Dennis Hopper, and even Andy Warhol himself. Another devotee, Madonna, explains that his art had such a vast appeal because "there was a lot of innocence and a joy that was coupled with a brutal awareness of the world."Haring was among the generation of gay men lost in the first wave of the AIDS epidemic. He was diagnosed in late 1988, but continued his art until, in his last months, he could no longer hold a pencil or brush. Until his death Keith Haring was devoted creating cultural awareness about the disease and other gay rights issues.He was thirty-one years old when he died, on February 16, 1990, in New York City.