Hidden Gallery has taken on a group of nine animation cels connected with Keith Haring's animated sequence for Sesame Street, "Telephone". According to the gallery's mailing, the cels were hand-drawn and screen-printed and were used in producing the animation. Each shows one of Haring's dancing figures, and the gallery stresses that no two are alike.
The gallery catalogues the works as "Untitled 1 from 'Telephone'", dated 1991. Each is executed in screenprint and marker on a rhodoïd animation cel, the transparent sheet used in hand-made animation, and each sheet measures 28 by 32 centimetres.
The biography the gallery publishes alongside the works traces Haring's long engagement with popular imagery. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1958 and raised in nearby Kutztown, he learned to draw cartoons as a child under the influence of popular culture. After two semesters at the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh and a solo show at the Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Center in 1978, he moved to New York that year, enrolled at the School of Visual Arts and became part of the downtown alternative scene alongside Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Between 1980 and 1985 he made hundreds of chalk drawings on empty advertising panels in the New York subway. He had his first solo show in New York in 1981, made his SoHo gallery debut with Tony Shafrazi in 1982 and took part in Documenta 7 and the Whitney Biennial. In 1986 he opened the Pop Shop in SoHo to make his images more widely available, a move the gallery notes drew criticism. Between 1982 and 1989 he produced more than 50 public works, many for hospitals, charities and children's centres, among them the "Crack is Wack" mural in New York and a mural on the Berlin Wall.
Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and the following year set up the Keith Haring Foundation to support AIDS organisations and children's programmes. He died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990, at the age of 31.
