Born in 1958, Reading, Pennsylvania. Dies on February 16, 1990 New York.

Keith Haring attends art school in Pittsburgh from 1977 to 1978, where he sees a retrospective of Pierre Alechinsky at the Carnegie Museum. He exhibits abstract drawings in his first one-man show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

He moves to New York City in 1978 and enrolls at the School of Visual Arts. From 1978 to 1979, he does large-scale paintings and also studies semiotics with Keith Sonnier. He meets Kenny Scharf, John Sex, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and is introduced to the work of William S. Burroughs.

Several exhibitions are organized at Club 57 in 1980, and he participates in Times Square Show and New York / New Wave. His first drawings appear during that period, with flying saucer, animal and human imagery.

He begins doing chalk on black paper subway drawings in 1981; he paints on a multitude of materials (plastic, metal, found objects, tarpaulins, and garden statuary). Exhibition of drawings and graffiti art at Mudd Club and Club 57. He paints his first mural in a schoolyard on Lower East Side.

Keith Haring participates in 1982 in Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany, exhibits in Whitney Museum Biennial and Biennial of Sao Paulo in 1983. He shows wooden sculptures and reliefs for the first time at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery.

In 1984, Keith Haring paints murals in Sydney, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Dobbs Ferry, Minneapolis and Manhattan, and in 1985, he exhibits a large number of painted steel sculptures at Leo Castelli Gallery, and he participates in the Biennial of Paris.
First major solo museum exhibition at the CAPC, Bordeaux.

From 1986, Haring ceases doing subway drawings. He opens Pop Shop, a retail store where he sales himself his by-products, and paints outdoor murals in New York (Crack is Wack), Amsterdam, Paris, and on the Berlin Wall. Solo exhibition at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

In 1987, works with children on outdoor murals worldwide. Red Dog for Landois, one of his major sculpture is created for Münster. Creates a large-scale sculpture commission for the Schneider Children’s Hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

Haring collaborates with William S. Burroughs in 1988 on the Apocalypse and The Valley (1989), and creates a suite of images illustrating the texts by the Pope of the Beat-Generation.

In 1989, Developing AIDS, he engages in widespread campaign against the disease and establishes the Keith Haring Foundation.