Description of the attraction
The Keith Haring Wall is a very unusual and little-known landmark in Pisa. Keith Haring (1958 - 1990) was a young American artist who, starting with painting the subway, became famous around the world. His first subway sketches were quick-drawn, ephemeral chalk sketches on blank billboards. Subway passengers hurrying to the carriage often stopped in front of these drawings and then stood for a long time and looked at them. From that moment on, Haring decided to "shake up" the traditional gallery system in art. He joined the graffiti artists, became interested in the new hip-hop culture and the avant-garde culture of street artists that spread in New York in the 1980s. In 1982, Haring exhibited his works in a fashionable gallery of modern art, where, in addition to drawings, he presented amphoras and plaster models to the public - at that time he devoted a lot of time to creating copies of famous statues, such as Michelangelo's David, Venus de Milo, and also made copies of ancient Greek and Egyptian amphoras … Orders from museums and cities from all over the world fell on the young artist like a cornucopia. Particularly in demand were wall paintings with simple graphic figures that seemed to be talking to passers-by. With the help of his works, Haring wanted to appeal to that primitive language in which graphic symbols merge with verbal ones: "My drawings are not trying to imitate life, they are trying to create it."
The idea for the murals in Pisa came about by chance when a young Pisa student met Haring on a New York street. The plot is peace and harmony throughout the Earth, which can be "read" in lines connecting 30 figures. The latter, folded into a single puzzle, occupy an area of 180 sq. M. on the south wall of the Church of San Antonio. Each figure represents different aspects of world peace: the "human" scissors are a symbol of solidarity with the Human trying to defeat the snake - a symbol of evil, already devouring the figure nearby. The figure of a woman with a child is a symbol of motherhood, and two men supporting a dolphin are an expression of man's relationship with nature. Choosing colors to create this large-scale painting, Haring found inspiration in the buildings of Pisa and in the very atmosphere of the city. He wanted his work, called Tuttomondo, to blend in with his surroundings. Today it is one of the few works created by Haring for permanent display. He spent a week creating it, while his other drawings took no more than one or two days.
30 figures literally ooze the energy that was inherent in Haring, and the amazing creative power that allowed him to create this hymn to Life just a few months before the artist died of AIDS.
