Through books and museum visits, where he saw his first Warhols on a visit to the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C., he began to develop an awareness of modern art. After finishing high school, Keith enrolled in the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh.

In 1976, Keith hitchhiked across the country, stopping along the way to look at art galleries and various art programs offered at different art institutes. When he returned to Pittsburgh later that year, he sat in on classes at the University of Pittsburgh, and eventually became involved with the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center, where he had his first exhibition.

Elements that would become central to Keith's style were beginning to emerge as he began working with small, interconnected abstract shapes. At the same time, he began to discover some of his most important influences among modern artists which led him to move to New York City in 1978 where he began studying at the School for Visual Arts.

Haring was inspired by the East Village club scene, identified with punk and rap music, break dancing and graffiti art as both a public and personal expression.

Throughout the early 1980’s, working with remarkable speed and clarity, Haring, using simple line drawings on vacant advertising boards in the New York subway as his canvas, became known as a graffiti artist who provoked debate on the street as well as within the exclusive art establishment, with his radiant comic figures and increasingly political messages.

As he became prominent with the gallery and museum world, Haring provoked additional debate by purposely commercializing his own work, reproducing his signature figures on an array of products and opening his own retail stores including Wham Bam in Miami and the Pop Shop in New York. Success afforded him the opportunity to control his own market and remain independent, crucial to his vision of his work.

From 1985 until his death in 1990 from complications due to AIDS, Haring concentrated much of his extraordinary energy on visual political messages, particularly focusing on generating action and conveying the dangers and effects of AIDS.