Keith Haring

American artist, 1958-1990

Keith Allen Haring 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 colorful murals. His later work often addressed political and societal themes - especially homosexuality and AIDS - through his own iconography.