ART BONANNO | SUBWAY

Estate of Keith Haring, New York (acquired directly from the artist)

The Keith Haring Foundation (by bequest from the above in 1990)

Art Bonanno first met Keith Haring while both were students at the School of Visual Arts. The two young artists quickly became friends as Haring began to build his network in New York. “Keith would sneak Jean-Michel Basquiat into school to do SAMO tags,” Bonanno recalls. Bonanno and Haring collaborated on video works including one of Keith's performance paintings, each influencing the other’s early output and pushing their work to new heights. “He was ambitious,” Bonanno says of his friend. "I once told him that he would be the next Andy Warhol.”

Subway is one of a series of ten journalistic pieces executed by Bonanno in 1980 while at SVA. These urban folk art works, conceived as artistic documents of New York life in the late 1970s and early 1980s, portray the gritty reality of the era. The present work depicts the true story of a music student pushed in front of an oncoming subway train, causing a career-ending injury. “Keith was always interested in that painting,” Bonanno explains. "Perhaps related to his investigation of the subways as canvas. I had been a graffiti artist in high school and we talked about my experiences as he explored ways to present his art directly, later brilliantly repurposing the blank advertising cards.” Haring requested the work for his own collection during a meeting years afterwards.

Bonanno has continued to paint and expanded into digital media. His work explores renewable energy and sustainability; recent large format digital works are an exploration of energy history. He remembers Haring fondly: “He had an inspiring work ethic, an uncanny ability to communicate with everyone and kept things fun with his great sense of humor.”