Keith Haring International Youth Year For Sale

International Youth Year is a lithograph created by Haring in 1985. The print was commissioned to celebrate International Youth Year, proclaimed by the United Nations (UN) to draw attention to issues faced by young people.  

In International Youth Year, a blue figure holds onto a pink sun, against a sunflower yellow background. Movement and an uplifting colour palette convey a youthful energy appropriate for the subject. It is no doubt that Haring’s visual language – accessible and recognisable, was perfect for the U.N’s project to reach a wide audience. As stated by Timothy Leary, ‘Keith could have jumped out of a time-capsule in the paleolithic age and started drawing on cave walls and they would have understood and laughed -- particularly the kids.’ 

As a socially and politically driven artist, Haring also cared greatly about young people and the problems they were affected by from the very beginnings of his career as a street-artist. He first became known for his Subway drawings, where he scrawled accessible and energetic visual messages that could be understood by a passerby in seconds. Even after reaching the height of his fame, Haring continued to create murals, this time with children in the poorest cities, and running workshops for them.  

Of his efforts to help young people, the artist wrote, ‘I’m sure, I at least, have been a good companion to a lot of children and maybe touched their lives in a way that will be passed on through time, and taught them a simple lesson of sharing and caring.’