Keith Haring’s Growing Series at Surovek Gallery

Keith Haring brought underground urban art into the avant-garde New York art scene and into the mainstream. Just in his twenties, when he moved from Pennsylvania to New York, Haring would create chalk drawings on empty advertisement boards at subway stations, much to the delight of the public and the consternation of the police.

His repeated use of stylized babies, dogs, space ships and other images became iconic symbols to millions of subway riders. Haring did as many as thirty drawings a day. His built-in audience got him wide recognition and even CBS anchor Dan Rather seemed to enjoy Haring’s art and gentle manner. Haring studied both Save & closecommercial art and traditional painting and was able to combine his skills to get his art seen by large audiences around the world.

For sale at Surovek Gallery

The style, bold lines and bright colors of Keith Haring’s works are instantly recognizable. “The drawings I do have very little to do with classical, post-renaissance drawings, where you try to imitate life or make it appear to be life-like.”

Haring said in a 1980 interview, “My drawings don’t try to imitate life; they try to create life, to invent life. That’s a much more so-called primitive idea, which is the reason that my drawings look like they could be Aztec or Egyptian or Aboriginal… and why they have so much in common with them. It has the same attitude towards drawing: inventing images. You’re sort of depicting life, but you’re not trying to make it life-like. I don’t use colors to try to look life-like, and I don’t use lines to try look life-like. It’s also m from much more Pop, I guess, after growing up in a really carbon-and comic-dominated period. And, also, growing up with Pop art.”

Haring’s Growing Suite was done 1n 1988, just one year after he was diagnosed with HIV and two years before his death at age 31. Haring was extremely prolific during his final years, creating works that celebrate life. The series consists of five screenprints, each signed in pencil, dated and inscribed ‘AP 8/15’, artist’s proofs aside from the numbered edition of 100, on Lenox Board.

In May, one of the color trial proofs from Growing Suite #2 set a world auction record at Bonham’s Los Angeles.

Keith Haring at the Tate Liverpool

The Tate Liverpool is staging the first major exhibit of Haring’s work in the UK. The show’s curator, Darren Pih said the exhibition, which includes works by Haring that have never been displayed before in the UK, would give a more “nuanced and complex” picture of Haring than is sometimes presented. Haring was both accessible and sophisticated, he said. “His popular reach doesn’t undermine his position as one of the most significant cultural figures and artists of the late 20th century.” The show will run through November 10, 2019.

Keith Haring Prints at Surovek Gallery

Please contact us if you would like more information about the Growing Suite or any of the other fine works by Keith Haring available at the Surovek Gallery.