Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He was interested in art his entire life and upon graduation from high school he immediately entered art school. He entered The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, where he was given his first solo art exhibition. In 1978, at the age of 20, Keith decided to go to New York City where he enrolled at the School of Visual Arts, and where he entered the exhilarating New York art world. In 1980, soon after leaving the School of Visual Arts, Keith began drawing his own graffiti on the streets. Like other graffiti artists, he invented his own tag or signature. His tag was an animal, which, as he continued to draw it, started to look more and more like a dog. Then, he drew a little person crawling on all fours, and the more he drew it, the more it became The Baby. In this way, Keith began to build his own personal vocabulary, which would vary and increase with the years. His works reflected every facet of his interests, from the street styles of breakdancing, rap music and graffiti to the sexual freedom of the period and the greater interchange between races. Soon after he had his first major gallery show in New York City. The critics called it dazzling and it was a fantastic success. Almost immediately, Keith was invited to exhibit in Europe - in Holland, Italy, Belgium, and England as well as in Japan. Everywhere, people responded to a style that combined the simple with the complex, which blended color and pattern to form dynamic images of great variety and originality. Keith Haring died of AIDS on February 16, 1990. He was 31 years old.