American artist of the barking dogs, radiant babies and outlined dancing figures, who drew them first in chalk on unsold advertising panels in the New York subway. Paris got him in short bursts — a gallery show in 1986, a place in a Pompidou group exhibition in 1987 — and kept one thing: the mural he painted on a children's hospital in the 15th arrondissement in 1987, three years before he died at thirty-one.
Keith Haring drew a small repertoire of figures — a crawling baby with lines coming off it, a barking dog, blank-faced people dancing, holding, hitting, lifting each other — in a heavy black outline that anyone could recognize and nobody could mistake for someone else's. He started putting them where the public actually was: between 1980 and 1985 he made hundreds of chalk drawings on the black paper panels that covered unsold advertising space in t[1]he New York subway.
New York holds the life: the School of Visual Arts from 1978, the first solo show in 1981, the Soho gallery debut in 1982, the Pop Shop in 1986, an AIDS diagnosis in 1988, the foundation he set up in 1989, and his death from AIDS-related illness on 16 February 1990, aged thirty-one. Paris holds episodes and one permanent object. In 1986 he had a one-man show at the Galerie Daniel Templon; in 1987 his work hung in a group exhibition at the Centre Pompidou; and in 1987 he painted a mural on the outside of the Necker children's hospital in the 15th arrondissement, on a wall rather than on anything that could be taken down at the end of a run.
Haring was born on 4 May 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the small town of Kutztown, drawing from a very early age. He enrolled at the Ivy School of Professional Art, a commercial-art school in Pittsburgh, in 1976. In 1978 he moved to New York and enrolled at the School of Visual Arts.
Between 1980 and 1985 he made hundreds of public drawings in the subway — white chalk on the matte black paper that the transit authority pasted over expired advertisements. The panels were free, the audience was everybody, and the work was gone whenever the next advertiser bought the space. His first New York solo exhibition was at the Westbeth Painters Space in 1981; in 1982 he made his Soho gallery debut with a one-man show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery that made him famous.
Haring's Paris was a run of short visits and shows rather than a period of residence, and the record from his own foundation is specific about it. In 1985 he was in the Biennale de Paris — the city's big recurring exhibition of new art — at the Grand Palais, the glass-roofed exhibition hall in the 8th arrondissement, and in a group show at the Galerie Beau Lezard. In 1986 he had a one-man exhibition at the Galerie Daniel Templon. In 1987 his work was included in a large group exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, L'Époque, la Mode, la Morale, la Passion ('The Era, Fashion, Morals, Passion') — his one appearance in a Paris museum while he was alive.
There was one more Paris show, at the Galerie La Poche, in 1990, the year he died. The museum recognition came afterwards: the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris included him in a group exhibition in 1996, six years after his death, and the Fondation Cartier, the contemporary-art foundation in Paris, put him in its graffiti survey Born in the Street in 2009.
In 1987 Haring painted a mural on the exterior of the Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades, the children's hospital in the 15th arrondissement. Everything else he did in Paris had an end date. The subway drawings were erased whenever the advertising space sold, the gallery shows came down after a few weeks, and the Pompidou exhibition closed. The hospital mural was painted on the building, for the children who use it.
Public walls were not a sideline to the studio work. Haring painted murals in public places through the decade he had, among them the anti-drug Crack is Wack wall in Harlem in 1986, on the same principle that had put him in the subway with a box of chalk.
In April 1986 he opened the Pop Shop in Soho, a store selling T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons and magnets carrying his images. It put the same figures the galleries were selling as paintings within reach of anyone who walked in off the street.
The Pop Shop makes my work accessible. It’s about participation on a big level.
He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. In 1989 he established the Keith Haring Foundation, which funds AIDS organizations and children's charities and still manages his work and image. He died of AIDS-related complications on 16 February 1990, at thirty-one.
On 23 October 1986 Haring painted a long stretch of the Berlin Wall, on the western side near Checkpoint Charlie, at the invitation of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.
He used the colours of both German flags, a yellow ground with red and black figures. Along the whole length he drew a chain of interlocking human forms, so that the two countries were shown joined at the body. He finished in a day. Accounts of how much wall he covered differ: his own foundation gives about three hundred metres, others nearer a hundred. Parts were painted over within days, some by other artists and some, he assumed, by people who disliked the point.
One of his last major public works went up in June 1989 on the outside wall of the church of Sant'Antonio in Pisa. Tuttomondo covers about a hundred and eighty square metres with thirty interlocking figures, and it is one of the few he made for a permanent site. It is still there.
In 1986 an assistant of Haring's was struggling with a crack addiction, and Haring went out and painted a handball court beside the Harlem River Drive without asking anyone.
Crack is Wack is orange, with the slogan in block capitals and his figures burning and screaming around it. He was arrested for it and fined a hundred dollars. The city then reversed itself, took the wall into the parks system, and it has been maintained as a public artwork ever since.
Crack is Wack is the clearest case of what Haring thought his drawing was for. The line was designed to be read instantly by someone who was not stopping to look, and he used it on public health as readily as on a gallery canvas.
Haring collaborated constantly, and the collaborations are not marginal to the work.
Andy Warhol became a close friend and the two made pieces together; Haring said Warhol's example was what made his own commercial ventures thinkable.[2] He showed alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat from the early graffiti-adjacent shows onwards.
In 1984 he body-painted Grace Jones for a performance and for photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, covering her in the same interlocking marks he was putting on walls. He hand-painted jackets that Madonna wore, designed with Vivienne Westwood, and worked for the dance and theatre companies that asked. He treated a body, a wall, a T-shirt and a canvas as the same surface.
Born on 4 May in Reading, Pennsylvania; raised in Kutztown.
Enrols at the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh.
Moves to New York and enrols at the School of Visual Arts.
Begins the subway drawings — hundreds of chalk drawings on the black paper panels covering unsold advertising space, made until 1985.
First New York solo exhibition, at the Westbeth Painters Space.
Soho gallery debut with a one-man show at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery.
Body-paints Grace Jones in his own marks for a performance and for photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Shows at the Biennale de Paris in the Grand Palais, and has a one-man exhibition at the museum of contemporary art in Bordeaux.
One-man exhibition at the Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris. Opens the Pop Shop in Soho in April, and paints Crack is Wack in Harlem.
Paints about three hundred metres of the Berlin Wall on 23 October, in the colours of both German flags, in a single day.
Paints Crack is Wack on a handball court beside the Harlem River Drive without permission, and is arrested and fined a hundred dollars.
Paints a mural on the exterior of the Necker children's hospital in Paris, his only permanent work in the city.
Included in L'Époque, la Mode, la Morale, la Passion at the Centre Pompidou, his only Paris museum exhibition during his lifetime.
Diagnosed with AIDS.
Establishes the Keith Haring Foundation to fund AIDS organizations and children's charities.
Paints Tuttomondo on the wall of the church of Sant'Antonio in Pisa, his last major public work and the only one made for a permanent site.
Dies of AIDS-related complications on 16 February, aged 31. A one-man show at the Galerie La Poche in Paris is held the same year.
Included posthumously in a group exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Painting
An orange wall carrying the words CRACK IS WACK in fat black capitals filled with dots, above a mass of black-outlined figures, a skull with crossed eyes, a burning dollar bill and flames. Keith Haring painted it in 1986 on a handball court beside the Harlem River Drive. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation maintains it as a public artwork, and the playground around it is named after it.
Painting
A band of red line drawing thirty-four metres long and a little over two metres high, running along a wall with no colour in it but red. A serpent with a sawtooth jaw crosses it, and its coiling body forms the word SIDA, Spanish and Catalan for AIDS. Keith Haring painted it in the Raval quarter of Barcelona in 1989, and the title means that all together we can stop AIDS. The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona holds the transferred original as R.1465.
Painting
Thirty figures locked together like a puzzle across about 180 square metres of a church wall in Pisa, drawn in heavy black outline and filled with pink, lilac, ochre, blue, cream and dark red. Keith Haring painted it in 1989 on the south wall of the church of Sant'Antonio Abate and signed it KH 89 at the lower right. The Comune di Pisa records it as one of the very few outdoor public works he created for permanent display rather than as a temporary piece.
Painting
A concrete stair tower at a children's hospital in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, painted from top to bottom with black-outlined figures over flat patches of red, yellow, blue and green. Keith Haring painted it in 1987 and signed it KH87 near the foot. It is not a museum object: it is the outside of a working building at the Hopital Necker-Enfants Malades, and it is the only permanent work he left in Paris.
Poster
Three yellow figures stand in a line on a red ground, one covering its eyes, one its ears and one its mouth, each with a magenta cross on the torso. A blue band across the top reads IGNORANCE = FEAR and a blue band across the bottom reads SILENCE = DEATH, followed by a pink triangle and the words FIGHT AIDS ACT UP. Keith Haring made it in 1989, the year after he was diagnosed with AIDS. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds an impression given by Robert D Farber, who had it from Keith Haring himself.
Met · 1978
The Keith Haring Foundation's biography places the meeting at the School of Visual Arts and the downtown scene around it: 'Here he became friends with fellow artists Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the musicians, performance artists and graffiti writers that comprised the burgeoning art community.'
Collaborated with · 1983
Burroughs met Haring in 1983 and later supplied the texts for their collaborative print portfolios Apocalypse and The Valley.
The Keith Haring Foundation's own biography names Warhol twice: his "unique fusion of art and life" as a model for Haring's decision to make truly public art, and Warhol himself among the "friends, fans and mentors" who backed the Pop Shop when much of the art world sneered.
Yes — on the outside of the Necker children's hospital, the Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades in the 15th arrondissement, painted in 1987. It is the permanent Haring in Paris. His foundation's biography lists it among the public murals he made in the last years of his life.
Several times, mostly in galleries. He was in the Biennale de Paris at the Grand Palais and a group show at the Galerie Beau Lezard in 1985; he had a one-man exhibition at the Galerie Daniel Templon in 1986; his work was in the Centre Pompidou group exhibition L'Époque, la Mode, la Morale, la Passion in 1987; and a show at the Galerie La Poche opened in 1990, the year he died. The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris showed him in 1996, after his death.
Because the space was empty, free and public. Between 1980 and 1985 he drew in white chalk on the matte black paper panels the New York transit authority used to cover expired advertisements, making hundreds of drawings for an audience of commuters rather than collectors. The drawings were temporary by design — they lasted until the space was sold again — and they are what made his figures recognizable before any gallery showed them.
A small, repeated cast drawn in thick black outline: a crawling baby with rays coming off it, a barking dog, and blank-faced human figures dancing, embracing, carrying and fighting one another. He used the same vocabulary in subway chalk, on canvas, on hospital walls and on the T-shirts sold at his Pop Shop, which is why the work reads instantly whatever it is painted on.
A store Haring opened in Soho, New York, in April 1986, selling T-shirts, posters, toys, buttons and magnets printed with his images — the same figures collectors were buying as paintings, at prices anyone could pay.
Of AIDS-related complications, on 16 February 1990, at the age of thirty-one. He had been diagnosed in 1988, and in 1989 he set up the Keith Haring Foundation, which funds AIDS organizations and children's charities and continues to manage his work.
Yes, on 23 October 1986, on the western side near Checkpoint Charlie. Accounts of the length differ: his foundation gives about three hundred metres, others nearer a hundred. He used the colours of both German flags and drew a chain of interlocking figures so that the two countries were joined at the body. He finished in a day, and parts were painted over within days.
A mural Haring painted without permission in 1986 on a handball court beside the Harlem River Drive, after an assistant of his began struggling with a crack addiction. He was arrested and fined a hundred dollars. The city then took the wall into the parks system, and it has been maintained as a public artwork since.
One of Haring's last major public works, painted in June 1989 on the outside wall of the church of Sant'Antonio in Pisa. It covers about a hundred and eighty square metres with thirty interlocking figures, and it is one of the few he made for a permanent site. It is still there.
Andy Warhol, a close friend whose example he said made his own commercial ventures thinkable, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside whom he showed from the early days. In 1984 he body-painted Grace Jones for photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. He also hand-painted jackets Madonna wore, designed with Vivienne Westwood, and worked for dance companies.
Worked at · 1987
Haring painted the external fire-stair tower on 28 and 29 April and 5 May 1987, working from a crane without a preparatory drawing. AP-HP records the mural as a donated work measuring 27 by 13 metres.
Influenced by
The Keith Haring Foundation's own biography names Warhol twice: his "unique fusion of art and life" as a model for Haring's decision to make truly public art, and Warhol himself among the "friends, fans and mentors" who backed the Pop Shop when much of the art world sneered.
Met · 1978
The Keith Haring Foundation's biography places the meeting at the School of Visual Arts and the downtown scene around it: 'Here he became friends with fellow artists Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the musicians, performance artists and graffiti writers that comprised the burgeoning art community.'
Collaborated with · 1983
Burroughs met Haring in 1983 and later supplied the texts for their collaborative print portfolios Apocalypse and The Valley.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Keith Haring and their work.
The estate's official biography — birth, the subway drawings, the Pop Shop, the 1987 Necker hospital mural, the diagnosis, the foundation, and his death.
Haring's own explanation of the Pop Shop as a way to make his work accessible beyond collectors and galleries.
The estate's year-by-year list of solo shows, including Bordeaux 1985, Galerie Daniel Templon 1986 and Galerie La Poche 1990.
The estate's year-by-year list of group shows, including the 1985 Biennale de Paris and the Centre Pompidou in 1987.
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Keith Haring. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
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