KEITH HARING, INTERNATIONAL YOUTH YEAR, SIGNED LITHOGRAPH, EDITION OF 1000, 1985
International Youth Year is a colour lithograph from 1985 by Keith Haring created to celebrate International Youth Year as proclaimed by the United Nations in the same year. The print was originally published by the World Federation of United Nations Associations in New York and shows a bright blue stick figure dancing underneath a pink sun, set against a glowing yellow backdrop and red landscape.
International Youth Year was an initiative by the UN that held activities all over the world, focusing attention on issues concerning and relating to young people everywhere. It is particularly apt that Haring was chosen to design this poster due to his vivacious and playful style that appealed to young people, exclusively using bold outlines, simplified shapes and bright, flattened colours.
Haring was tireless in his work with children of all ages and backgrounds, collaborating on murals with young people in America’s poorest inner cities and holding numerous drawing workshops. Upholding a world view that rendered racial, cultural and sexual differences immaterial, Haring admired children for their sense of innocence claiming, ‘Children are colour-blind and still free of all the complications, greed and hatred that will slowly be instilled in them.’ Haring’s ageless and genderless figures, as seen in International Youth Year are indicative of this worldview that the artist promoted.
Discover more Keith Haring artworks.
ABOUT KEITH HARING
Known for his bold graphic style and playful sense of humour, Keith Haring is one of the most influential and adored artists of the 20th century.
Born in Pennsylvania, in 1958, Haring was a talented draughtsman as a child and developed his cartoonish style at the hands of his father and the work of Walt Disney and Dr Seuss. However it would take some time before he realised he could marry this kind of drawing with being a fine artist. Upon graduating from high school he enrolled in a commercial art school before realising he had little interest in pursuing a career as an illustrator or graphic designer. After dropping out of college he joined the hippie movement and hitchhiked across the country where he made anti-Nixon t-shirts to pay for food and Grateful Dead tickets. Learn more about Keith Haring.
