In collaboration with the Keith Haring Foundation, Pace Prints (Booth C5) is pleased to present an exhibition of prints and multiples by Keith Haring, focusing on the artist’s interest in Mesoamerican cultures. Curated alongside Haring’s work will be museum-quality artifacts from some of the same pre-Columbian civilizations that influenced the artist.
Tracing human storytelling back to pictographic and hieroglyphic writing systems, Haring expressed his own vision through a personal syntax of signs and symbols. Haring’s iconographic vocabulary spoke directly to the social concerns and debates of the 1970s and 80s. Fascinated by the complex surface pattern and unusual color combinations from Aztec and Mayan cultures specifically, Haring narrated his compositions with meditative line, layering symbol within symbol. Keith Haring’s synthesis of the history he revered and the life he observed and lived produced the paramount works on display, including Pyramid (1989), Dog (1986) and his Totem series.
Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He lived and worked in New York City from 1978 until his death in 1990 from AIDS related illnesses. 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. Pace Prints (Booth C5) has represented the Keith Haring Foundation for editions and small-scale multiples since 2011.