Keith Haring

KEITH HARING (Reading, Pennsylvania, 1958 – New York, 1990).
"Galerie Watari, Tokyo," 1983.
Color offset lithographic poster on pearlescent Japanese paper, one of 1,000 copies.
Unsigned.
Published by On Sundays Publications, Tokyo, on the occasion of the artist’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Watari, held from March 8 to April 8, 1983.
Includes a receipt from On Sundays and the original tube.
Provenance: private collection, France.
Measurements: 67.9 x 51.7 cm.

Produced to mark Haring’s first solo exhibition in Japan, this poster marks a pivotal moment in the artist’s rise to international prominence. In 1983, just one year after his first major solo exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York, Haring exhibited in Tokyo, London, and Naples and participated in the Whitney Biennial, rapidly consolidating a career that had emerged from his famous drawings in the New York subway.

The composition brings together several essential elements of his visual vocabulary: a human figure riding a dolphin, a flying saucer, symbols of movement and energy, and, along the bottom edge, the recurring “radiant baby.” The predominance of the black line, enlivened by red accents against the pearlescent background, reflects the extraordinary graphic economy with which Haring constructed an immediately recognizable language.

Through his subway drawings, Haring sought direct communication with a broad audience, later transferring that same iconography to murals, posters, publications, and popular culture items. The Galerie Watari edition stands as an early testament to the international expansion of that language and its special relationship with Japan.

Keith Haring was one of the central figures of the New York art scene in the 1980s. He gained notoriety at the beginning of the decade with his chalk drawings in empty subway advertising spaces and held his first major solo exhibition in 1982 at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. In 1986, he opened the Pop Shop, designed to make his imagery accessible to a broad audience, and in 1989, he established the Keith Haring Foundation. His work is included in collections such as those of MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.