Keith Haring Birthday Acknowledged By Latest Google Doodle

Keith Haring, the late pop artist who was mentored by Andy Warhol and passed away in 1990, has been commemorated in a Google Doodle. Had he been alive, Haring would have turned 54 today.

Google’s home page features a doodle bearing close resemblance to Haring’s instantly recognisable pop art style. Bright colors and bold black lines are used for a series of characters to spell out ‘Google.’

The ‘e’ of the Google features a figure holding a heart design, as seen in one of Haring’s most famous works.

Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was raised in nearby Kutztown, Pennsylvania. His passion for drawing appeared at an extremely early age, and a young Keith was actively encouraged by his father.

When he graduated high school in 1976, Haring enrolled at the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, only to soon drop out and paint alone, without completing a formal art education. Not long after, he moved to New York, where he would eventually meet Warhol and became a major player in the city’s thriving alternative art community.

His beginnings in New York were more humble, however: he began to build his reputation with chalk drawings on the New York subway, something he once described as a “laboratory” for working out his ideas.

Haring was known as much for his activism as for his simple drawings that focused on the primacy of the line. His pieces often carried social messages, and many of the 50 public artworks he created between 1982 and 1989 were made for charities, hospitals, children’s day care centres and orphanages.

Keith Haring died of Aids-related illnesses in February 1990. He was 31 years old.