Keith Haring. Radiant Vision, Installation views exhibition, Royal Villa of Monza | Photo: © LaltroSCATTO – Patrizia Scolletta
Parma – Over one hundred works by the most famous pop artist of the 1980s are about to enter the halls of Palazzo Tarasconi in Parma. After the American tour, the success at the Villa Reale in Monza and the last stage in Israel, Keith Haring returns to Italy with the exhibition Radiant Visionexpected from 17 September to 4 February.
Lithographs, serigraphs, drawings on paper, posters from a private collection retrace the entire span of the short and prolific career of the American painter and writer, reviewing the various aspects of the artist’s life and production, from drawings on the subway to exhibitions in some of New York’s most famous galleries, but also the Pop Shop, his personal store to realize his goal of an art for everyone.
The exhibition itinerary will be a tribute to the artist who has rewritten the rules of contemporary art, ranging from paintings to posters, from sculptures to street art, exploring the potential of his “brand” through commercial partnerships, consumer products and even a own showcase. An advocate for civil rights, child welfare and AIDS awareness, the painter who died at just 32 spent his entire career creating public art and charitable commissions in support of these causes.
Keith Haring. Radiant Vision, Installation views exhibition, Villa Reale di Monza | Photo: © LaltroSCATTO – Patrizia Scolletta
The iconic “Radiant Baby”, which became emblematic symbols of the era, demonstrate how Haring effectively used images to fight for change using art as a platform for his activism. Crossing the nine sections of the itinerary, the visitor will follow the evolution of the symbols, which Haring became passionate about very early on, in runic pictograms which gave life to his visual lexicon.
Children, barking dogs, scarred men, smiling faces, dancing figures, incandescent televisions accompany visitors towards the artist’s beginnings in the city of New York, where he moved in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Arts. Here with works like Untitled (Apartheid), where a large black figure struggles to free itself from the noose of the white oppressor, Haring supports the anti-apartheid movement. There Kalish Suitea group of eleven etchings, instead represents the joint effort of Haring and Sean Kalish, an elementary school child who frequented the Pop Shop showing a precocious talent for dynamic and linear drawings similar to those of the artist.
Keith Haring. Radiant Vision, Installation views exhibition, Villa Reale di Monza | Photo: © LaltroSCATTO – Patrizia Scolletta
The exhibition in Parma will also be an opportunity to admire Medusa Head, the largest print ever made by Haring, over two meters long and almost five feet high. The work is the result of a collaboration with the Danish typographer Borch Jensen who, after meeting Haring at a dinner, invited the artist to experiment with his newly installed printing press. The work revisits the Greek story of Medusa in a modern key. For Haring, who witnessed the deadly effects of AIDS in 1986, the mythical monster was an apt symbol of the terrifying disease that would soon kill himself and his young friends.
The exhibition Keith Haring. Radiant Visioncurated by Katharine J Wright, can be visited from Wednesday to Sunday from 10 to 19.30.
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• Keith Haring in one hundred works to be discovered in Monza