Pace Prints is pleased to present a unique artist’s proof of Keith Haring’s 1990 silkscreen edition, The Blueprint Drawings. On March 17, the day after Keith Haring: 1978-1982 opens at the Brooklyn Museum, this monumental scroll will be exhibited to the public for the very first time. This unique proof, from Haring’s own collection, contains all 17 images from The Blueprint Drawings, printed on one continuous sheet of paper that wraps around our 4th floor exhibition space. The 80-foot long print is generously on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation.
Complementing the exhibition of early works on view at the Brooklyn Museum, this edition was based on Sumi ink drawings Haring created in 1980-81. In 1990, Haring revisited these drawings and reconceived them as a portfolio of 17 silkscreens. The imagery features the inchoate elements of the iconic language associated with Keith Haring to this day – pyramids, flying saucers, dogs and crawling babies are intermixed with wandering figures and human/animal/extraterrestrial activities. According to Haring, “They form a perfect time capsule of my beginning in New York City.”
Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, PA. In 1978, Haring moved to New York City and enrolled in the School of Visual Arts. It was here that he found the thriving alternative art community that was developing outside of the gallery and museum system, with events and exhibitions taking place in the downtown streets, subways and nightclubs. In 1990, at the age of 31, Keith Haring died of AIDS-related illnesses in New York. Since his death, his work has been the subject of several international retrospectives. His work is in major private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Bass Museum, Miami; Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. The exhibition Keith Haring: 1978-1982, most recently on view at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and co-organized by Kunsthalle Wien, will open at the Brooklyn Museum in March 2012.