Keith HARING

"My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can."

 

Having spent most of his career working for a wide audience, Keith Haring's graffiti-inspired art is characterised by simple and energetic lines. They describe synthetic and repetitive shapes, black or white, which stand out against a background of bright colors. Dynamic rhythms create effective images, which we might interpret as the influence of Dubuffet or Alechinsky. He thus recounts a story in which four-legged babies, dolphins, televisions, dogs, snakes, symbols, and small humans intermingle in various poses. Beyond the apparent nonchalance of his drawings, Haring tells of love, happiness, joy, and sex, but also violence, exploitation, and oppression. Towards the end of his life, his work was marked by an imagination as abundant as ever, but complicated by his recent discovery that he was HIV-positive.