Born on May 4th 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania and raised in a nearby town called Kutztown, Keith Haring had a love for drawing at a very early age, inspired by his father, an amateur cartoonist, and Walt Disney cartoons. After briefly studying commercial art in Pittsburgh, Haring reads Robert Henri’s The Painting Spirit which encouraged him to concentrate on his art. After quitting Pittsburgh’s Ivy School of Professional Art he became a repair worker at the Centre of The Arts where he was exposed to works of Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Mark Tobey. Haring later came across Pierre Alechinksy show which inspired him to create large scale paintings. He moved to New York in the late 1970s to attend the School of Visual Arts, and soon immersed himself in the city’s graffiti culture. By the mid-1980s, he had befriended fellow artists Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His famous white chalk drawings could often be found on the blank poster marquees in New York’s public spaces and subways.
“ I don't think art is propaganda. It should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it. „