BiographyKeith Haring was an American artist who emerged from New York's graffiti and club scenes in the early 1980s, developing an immediately recognizable visual language of bold, outlined figures, dogs, hearts, and radiant babies that he first drew in the white-paper spaces of unused subway advertisement panels. His work carried urgent messages about AIDS, drug abuse, apartheid, and human rights, and he opened his Pop Shop in 1986 to make his art accessible to everyone. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1990 at the age of 31.
