Keith Haring

Keith Haring was an American artist and activist who lived from 1958 to 1990. His bold, graphic imagery became a widely recognized visual language. Emerging from the downtown art and graffiti scenes of New York City in the early 1980s, he transformed subway chalk drawings on unused black advertising panels, with crawling babies, barking dogs and dancing figures, into an internationally celebrated career that bridged street art and Pop art. He gained gallery representation and produced large-scale paintings and sculptures, and between 1982 and 1989 he created more than 50 public murals, many of them voluntarily for hospitals, schools and community spaces.