Sale: 375 / Post War / Contemporary Art, Dec. 04. 2010 in Munich Lot 216

 
Keith Haring/LA II - Ohne Titel


216
Keith Haring/LA II
Ohne Titel, 1984.
Estimate:
€ 28,000 / $ 30,240
Sold:
€ 34,160 / $ 36,892

(incl. surcharge)
Spray paint on hard fibre board
197,5 x 89 cm (77,7 x 35 in)

Accompanied by a certificate from the Estate of Keith Haring, New York, dated 12 June 2008. The work is registered under the number "061208A9".

Keith Allan Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on 4 May 1958. He got early into cartoons and comic strips and loved to draw. After leaving High School in 1976, he visited the 'Ivy School of Professional Art' in Pittsburgh for a year, where he studied the works of Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet, Marc Tobey and Jackson Pollock and completed a large number of abstract drawings. When he was just 20 years old in 1978, Haring had his first one-man show at the 'Pittsburgh Center for the Arts' and moved to the 'School of Visual Arts' in New York. In New York, he also met Francesco Clemente, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William S. Borroughs and other artists, who soon became close friends. Haring found inspiring motifs in the city's graffiti art, a technique he also used for his drawing style since 1980. At that time, he developed a dog -like animal as his 'tag', which became an inherent part of his iconography. The same way a whole vocabulary of reduced figurative signs, which populated Keith Haring's image world, came into existence. In the New York subway he executed the famous chalk drawings on black stuck-on advertising surfaces, with which the artist attracted a good deal of attention. He had his breakthrough with an exhibition at Tony Shafrazi's gallery in 1982, in which he linked his already well-known art to his name. Invitations to exhibitions in Europe followed immediately. A special focus of Haring's work was always on social commitment. Haring had 20,000 posters printed for an anti-nuclear demonstration in 1982, which he distributed in Central Park. He painted for UNICEF, against AIDS, apartheid in South Africa, illiteracy and drug abuse. Again and again children were in the center of his efforts. In the time that follows, Haring created a number of murals and organized spectacular body-painting sessions, the first being in London in 1983.

"With his smooth lines and his hyperactive imagination, Haring manages to transport political, poetical and spiritual messages to a wide, non-elitarian, multicultural and international audience." (Translation of quote from Barry Blinderman, in: Keith Haring, Munich 1992, p. 30). In doing so he uses public spaces, he paints subway stations and – as it is the case with this work – on wooden walls that are removed from public spaces at a later point. Almost all of his murals were made during the day, as it is of crucial importance to include the audience in the act of creation, as well as to create constant works of art in a material sense.

Keith Haring received many international commissions for stage sets, costume designs, advertising spots and music videos. Large exhibitions ins America and Europe added to the artist's increasing fame. Haring now received more and more orders for major projects, such as the 'Billboard Project', which he developed in 1986 together with Jenny Holzer for the Vienna Festival. The same year Haring opened his Pop Shop in New York, in which he sold souvenirs with his motifs. Between 1986 and 1989, he regularly organized drawing and painting workshops for children. At the end of 1988 Haring realized that he contracted AIDS. The artist died in New York on 16 February 1990 from an AIDS-related illness. [SM].




216
Keith Haring/LA II
Ohne Titel, 1984.
Estimate:
€ 28,000 / $ 30,240
Sold:
€ 34,160 / $ 36,892

(incl. surcharge)