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Keith HaringSigned Keith Haring letter 1984 (Keith Haring Tony Shafrazi Gallery 1984)1984
1984
About the Item
Keith Haring Tony Shafrazi Gallery 1984:
A RARE signed Keith Haring letter produced in 1984 by Haring's long-time gallerist, Tony Shafrazi in reference to Keith Haring's wood panel series at the time. Hand-signed in ink by Haring on Tony Shafrazi Gallery letterhead, alongside the artist's signature 1980s crawling baby sticker. A fantastic frame piece.
Medium: Hand-signed typed letter on Tony Shafrazi gallery letterhead.
Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 inches.
Very good overall vintage condition. Clean, well-preserved signature & Haring crawling baby sticker.
Provenance: Originates from the collection of a former Shafrazi gallery employee.
Accompanied by a COA from Lot 180 Gallery New York.
Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania. From a young age he enjoyed drawing, especially Disney characters and other cartoons. He initially wanted to become a commercial artist but after a year at the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, Haring dropped, moved to New York City and enrolled in the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Haring immediately felt connected to the thriving alternative arts scene happening downtown in the late 1970s and became friends with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf.
Inspired by the ideals of “art as life” and moving the art experience out of galleries and into the streets, Haring’s first major works were his subway drawings. Haring produced over one hundred of these public works between 1980 and 1985, integrating his now-iconic exuberant, cartoonish outlined figures into everyday public space in a way that directly engaged its viewers. Haring recalled that the most important aspects of these works was the immediate engagement people had with them, asking him “what does it mean?” and giving him feedback that he’d then incorporate into future drawings. In this way, these works became reflections of the people who viewed them, responsive to and in dialogue with their environment. These works quickly garnered the attention of tastemakers in New York and his first solo exhibition was held at Westbeth Painters Space in 1981 and a celebrated show debuted at the high-profile Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York the following year.
Throughout the 1980s, Haring was committed to democratizing the art experience and along with paintings, he also created theater sets, billboards, murals, advertising campaigns and even a line of Swatch watches. In 1986 he opened the Pop Shop in SoHo, selling apparel, posters and toys bearing his drawings. Pop Shop was highly influential to contemporary crossovers of art and merchandise that are now so dominant, as in the work of Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, KAWS, Shepard Fairey and Takashi Murakami.
Haring was very socially engaged and used his striking imagery to promote awareness of various political and social campaigns. His many notable public works included a mural on the western side of the Berlin Wall, the Crack is Wack mural in New York, and a mural for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and used his presence in the arts community to raise awareness of the crisis. In 1989, a year before his death, he established the Keith Haring Foundation, whose mission is to raise funds for AIDS organizations and children’s literacy and arts programs.
Since his death in 1990, Haring has become one of the most widely-recognized and celebrated artists of the 20th century, priming the path for the rise of graffiti and street art in the 21st century and a socially-conscious approach to talking about sexuality, intimacy and visibility through public art.
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Tony Shafrazi Gallery: A further background:
Tony Shafrazi has been a pivotal voice in the art world for over half a century. Known for his groundbreaking partnerships with such renowned artists as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Andy Warhol, the estate of Francis Bacon, and many others, Tony Shafrazi’s impact on the shape of the modern art world as we know it is unparalleled among his peers. Keith Haring's first major gallery show took place at Tony Shafrazi gallery in October of 1982 and is widely considered as the artist's most seminal exhibition.
Related Categories
Keith Haring ephemera. Keith Haring letter. Signed Keith Haring. Keith Haring Tony Shafrazi Gallery. Keith Haring wood panels. Keith Haring 1984.
- Creator:Keith Haring (1958-1990, American)
- Creation Year:1984
- Dimensions:Height: 11 in (27.94 cm)Width: 8.5 in (21.59 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:NEW YORK, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU35438701692
Keith Haring
Keith Haring began experimenting with his bold, graphic lines and cartoon-inspired figures on the walls of New York City subway stations in the early 1980s. He called them his “laboratory,” places to develop a radical new aesthetic based on an ideology of creating truly democratic public art.
Haring’s paintings, prints and murals address the universal themes of death, love and sex, as well as contemporary issues he experienced personally, like the crack-cocaine and AIDS epidemics. They derive much of their impact from the powerful contrast between these serious subjects and the joyful, vibrant pictographic language he uses to express them, full of dancing figures, babies, barking dogs, hearts and rhythmic lines, as well as references to pop culture.
To make his art even more accessible, in 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop in Soho. In a foreshadowing of today’s intermingling of art and fashion, the shop sold merchandise and novelty items featuring imagery by Haring and contemporaries like Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat. While his works sometimes included text, for the most part, he chose to communicate through drawing.
“Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times,” Haring once declared. “It lives through magic.”
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