Keith Haring

Keith Haring

Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art and graffiti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s. Much of his work includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism. He achieved this by using sexual images to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness.

Haring's work grew to popularity from his spontaneous drawings in New York City subways—chalk outlines of figures, dogs, and other stylized images on blank black advertising-space backgrounds. After public recognition, he created larger scale works, such as colourful murals, many of them commissioned. His imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language".His later work often addressed political and societal themes—especially homosexuality and AIDS—through his own iconography.

Haring died on February 16, 1990, of AIDS-related complications. (biography.com, 2014)

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1984)

The marriage of heaven and hell "perfectly illustrates the fact that an entire generation was confronted very early with a life of" sex, drugs and rock roll ", and that they very quickly became disillusioned with it. (artransfer, n.d.)