Haring

Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death and war. Haring’s imagery has become a widely recognized visual language of the 20th century.Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Keith Haring was raised with his three younger sisters, Kay, Karen and Kristen in Kutztown, Pennsylvania by his mother, Joan Haring, and father, Allen Haring, a cartoonist. Interested in art from an early age, he studied commercial art from 1976 to 1978 at Pittsburgh’s Ivy School of Professional Art. Losing interest in commercial art, Haring moved to New York City in 1978 at age 19. Inspired by the city’s burgeoning graffiti art scene, he enrolled in Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts where he majored in Painting.