Keith Haring

Keith Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1958. He started to take an interest in painting and drawing at an early age and moved to New York in 1978 after dropping out of a commercial art school. In New York, he attended the School of Visual Arts, where he was exposed to the avant-garde propositions of the city’s vibrant art scene.

Keith Haring Is one of the key members of the avant-garde New York-based artists who help redefine the boundaries of Modern art in the 1980s. His work runs similar to that of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Kenny Scharf, and other 1980s artists and engages with a variety of media and techniques, such as drawing, painting, body art, and graffiti. Haring has produced monumental public works that contributed to bringing recognition to Street art and to its entrance into museums.

I really like that Haring’s style is based on abstract, stylized forms worked into interlocking human figures and tightly arranged patterns. He tends to use few basic colours in hyper-saturated hues, applied as flat areas of paint and shaped into thick silhouettes. Haring sought out inspiration for his artistic practice in the popular culture that surrounded him, engaging with the main social and political issues of his time, such as the AIDS epidemic, South African apartheid, and the American conservative politics of the 1890s.