Untitled (Subway Drawing)
Details
Edition
Unique
Medium
Chalk on Paper
Signature
Unsigned
Unframed Dimensions
76 x 40.5 in
193.04 x 102.87 cm
Framed Dimensions
80.5 x 45 x 2 in
204.47 x 114.3 x 5.08 cm
Year
1980-1986
MORE FROM THIS ARTIST
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Keith Haring (born 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania; died 1990, New York City) was a transformative American Pop and street artist whose bold, graphic visual language helped redefine contemporary art in the 1980s. Known for his iconic radiant babies, barking dogs, crawling figures, and pulsing lines of energy, Haring merged the immediacy of street culture with the accessibility of cartoon imagery to create an artistic vocabulary that was both universal and deeply political.
Haring demonstrated an early love for art, learning to draw cartoon characters from his father before briefly studying commercial art at the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh. After deciding to pursue his own artistic path, he moved to New York City in 1978, immersing himself in a downtown art scene energized by graffiti, club culture, breakdancing, and the experimental work of contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf. Responding to the movement of ideas happening outside traditional galleries, Haring developed a visual language rooted in abstraction, symbols, and rhythmic lines.
His breakthrough came in the early 1980s through an unexpected venue: the New York City subway. Discovering unused black advertising panels, Haring used chalk to fill these empty spaces with spontaneous line drawings, sometimes creating over forty works a day. These chalk drawings became an underground phenomenon, turning commuters into an ever-changing audience. He embraced the performative nature of the process, welcoming public interaction and even arrest, while his ephemeral subway drawings began to be peeled from the stations and collected within hours of their creation.
Haring’s first major gallery exhibition took place at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Soho in 1982, featuring drawings, painted tarps, sculpture, and on-site murals. The show was a sensation, launching him onto the international stage. Over the next decade he exhibited widely in Tokyo, Milan, London, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Basel, Amsterdam, Cologne, and across the United States. In 1986 he opened the Pop Shop on Lafayette Street, a revolutionary retail space designed to make his work affordable and accessible to all, a democratizing gesture that challenged the exclusivity of the contemporary art world.
In 1988, Keith Haring was diagnosed with AIDS. Courageously open about his illness, he used his remaining years to advocate for education, awareness, and compassion. He founded the Keith Haring Foundation in 1989 to support AIDS organizations and children’s charities, ensuring that his activism would endure beyond his lifetime. Haring passed away in 1990 at the age of 31, leaving behind a legacy far larger than his brief career.
Today, Haring is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the late 20th century. His works are collected by leading figures including Andy Warhol, Peter Brant, Larry Warsh, and Madonna, and his auction market has soared, with major paintings, murals, and sculptures achieving multimillion-dollar results. His art is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMOMA, the Tate Modern (London), the Art Institute of Chicago, and numerous international institutions. His monumental public murals span from Paris to Pisa, Melbourne to Philadelphia, and remain preserved as vibrant testaments to his fearless creativity, inclusivity, and social conscience.
Explore Keith Haring at DTR Modern Galleries
Keith Haring’s instantly recognizable Pop and street artworks remain a cornerstone of contemporary collecting, and DTR Modern Galleries proudly offers selections of his editions and works across its contemporary gallery locations in New York City, Boston, Palm Beach, and Washington, D.C.
