This open edition Screenprint was designed by Keith Haring for the 1983 Montreux Jazz Festival. It has been printed on half-matte 250gr coated paper, in stunning high quality and bold inks. This is not the 1983 poster, but is an authentic Montreux Jazz Festival release. 

The photos of Keith Haring in cut-offs and big glasses chalking his curved figures on advertising boards in the subway are iconic images of 1980s cool and of a form of art open to all. The first official exhibition of Keith Haring’s work was held in 1982 at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York, and was hugely successful. Pierre Keller met Haring a few months later and asked him to produce a Festival poster featuring a dancing figure. Haring came up with three designs, all of which were accepted. The posters sold poorly, however, since Haring had not yet made a name for himself on the other side of the Atlantic. Keller took the remaining stock home, with each poster selling for between 8,000 and 10,000 francs several years later. Not a bad deal! More importantly, that summer of 1983 Keller and Nobs had the brainwave of inviting the New York artist to Montreux. As always, Haring painted constantly, producing murals on large blank panels and dashing off drawings on t-shirts. All forms of media seemed to suit the artist, whose meteoric rise was matched only by the speed of his drawing.

 Framed size: 1290 x 960mm

Keith Haring was an American artist and social activist known for his illustrative depictions of figures and symbols. His white chalk drawings could often been found on the blank poster marquees in New York’s public spaces and subways. “I don't think art is propaganda,” he once stated. “It should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.” Born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, PA, he grew up in neighboring Kutztown, where he was inspired to draw from an early age by Walt Disney cartoons and his father who was an amateur cartoonist. After briefly studying commercial art in Pittsburgh, Haring came across a show of the works of Pierre Alec hinksy and decided to pursue a career in fine art instead. He moved to New York in the late 1970s to attend the School of Visual Arts, and soon immersed himself in the city’s graffiti culture. By the mid-1980s, he had befriended fellow artists Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and collaborated with celebrities like the singer Grace Jones. Diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1988, Haring’s prodigious career was brief, and he died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990 at the age of 31.