Keith Haring Retrospective Exhibition

13 March - 13 June 1999 in the Entire Gallery
The name Keith Haring is recognised in all parts of the globe. Haring’s style has been cloned into an international graphic vernacular. With Jean-Michel Basquiat, Haring has been hailed as one of the most original artists of the 1980s. Haring’s bold graphic style continues to hold broad public appeal.

Street smart and artwise, Keith Haring's vibrant, sexy, comic-like images are some of the most enticing works ever to hit a canvas, or a badge, or a subway wall, or a nightclub, or any of the other inventive surfaces Haring employed to get his art seen by as many people as possible. Haring achieved much in his life, tragically shortened in 1990 when he died from AIDS aged 31. His work appeared on Swatch watches and the Berlin Wall; he worked with Grace Jones and Brooke Shields; collaborated with Andy Warhol and William Burroughs; hung out with Madonna; and opened his own Pop Shop stores in New York and Tokyo.

Haring wanted to make his art accessible to anyone, not just the art elite. He described his goal as "getting art off the pedestals and giving it back to the people". From there he blazed a trail to the world's most famous galleries.

The first major retrospective of Haring's life and work to tour prestigious international art museums makes its only Australasian stop at City Gallery Wellington. It gathers the most important examples of Haring’s paintings, drawings, sculpture and other objects, and traces the evolution of Haring’s art until his untimely death at age 31 in 1990. It also documents through photography and video the many site-specific drawings and paintings Haring made for public spaces and galleries in the United States and around the world.

Curated and toured by New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, the exhibition is another major coup by City Gallery Wellington, following exclusive shows of collected works by other leading New York artists, including photographers Robert Mapplethorpe and Annie Leibovitz.