Keith Haring's birthday celebrated with Google Doodle Upon graduation from high school in 1976, Haring enrolled in the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh but dropped out in favour of studying and painting on his own. He later moved to New York, where he was inspired by the city's thriving alternative art community that was developing outside the gallery and museum system. Drawing on the work of Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Alechinsky, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Robert Henri for inspiration, Haring developed a kind of graphic expression based on the primacy of the line. He began to find notoriety with chalk drawings on the New York subway, which he would later described as a "laboratory" for working out his ideas and experimenting with his simple lines. Between 1980 and 1989, he achieved international recognition and participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. He also evoted much of his time to public works, which often carried social messages. He produced more than 50 public artworks between 1982 and 1989, in dozens of cities around the world, many of which were created for charities, hospitals, children's day care centres and orphanages. Haring was diagnosed with Aids in 1988 and the following year established the Keith Haring Foundation to provide funding and imagery to Aids organisations.