Totem

1987

Diagnosed with HIV

He was diagnosed with HIV in 1987. An openly gay artist and advocate of safe sex, he used his imagery in the last years of his life to speak about his illness and to generate activism and awareness about AIDS.

autumn 1988

Diagnosed with AIDS

In the autumn of 1988 he was diagnosed with AIDS. From then on he campaigned actively against the silence around the illness; the danger of the disease became a constant theme of his work, the virus typically appearing in his graphics as a sperm cell with devil’s horns.

December 1988

A show at Tony Shafrazi’s, his “most important to date”

In December 1988 an exhibition of his opened at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, which he called his most important show to date; because of his health and the deaths of his friends Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat he felt he had something to prove.

1989

Founds the Keith Haring Foundation

In 1989 he established the Keith Haring Foundation to provide funding to AIDS organisations and children’s programmes and to maintain and distribute his artwork. He appointed his assistant and studio manager Julia Gruen, who had worked for him since 1984, as executive director.

16 February 1990

Dies of AIDS-related complications in his apartment

On 16 February 1990 he died of AIDS-related complications at his LaGuardia Place apartment in Greenwich Village. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in a field near Bowers, Pennsylvania, just south of his hometown of Kutztown.

16. februar 1990

Died