Keith attended art The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, where he was given his first solo art exhibition. In 1978, at the age of 20, Haring decided to go to New York City where he enrolled at the School of Visual Arts. Later, he took course in video art, semiotics, and in performance art. He lived in Greenwich Village, and Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, became his friends. New York in the 1980s was a place where lots of things were always happening. Kids from all over America were coming to the East Village to live and to create. They were a whole new generation taking over from the fast-fading hippie culture. Haring was part of this feverish activity as he immersed himself in the club scene, the punk-rock music scene and especially in the graffiti scene, which was blossoming on the streets and in the subway system of the city. He was a meteoric star in American art during the 1980s, exhibiting and working on projects throughout the USA, Europe and Asia, and his work became a symbol of the tribal undercurrents that permeate metropolitan life. He fell victim to the AIDS epidemic and died in 1990.
