The cross-shaped stele by Keith Haring, one of the most distinguished Pop Art artists of the 1980s, was created for the premiere of a production of Aida in the Egyptian city of Luxor in the Sahara Desert. In 1987, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera was performed for the first time in Luxor with celebrated opera stars Jessye Norman and Plácido Domingo in the leading roles. Haring created two steles, which were studded with black Swarovski crystals and formed part of the stage decoration. After Keith Haring’s death, André Heller acquired both steles; today, one of them can be seen in Swarovski Kristallwelten (Swarovski Crystal Worlds), while the other has found a home in André Heller’s own garden.
Keith Haring was born in in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, in 1958 and is one of the most well-known exponents of Pop Art in the world. After completing his studies at the School of Visual Arts (New York), he became a freelance artist and developed an imaginative form of expression in the graffiti style that quickly garnered him international recognition. He painted a mural on the Berlin Wall near Checkpoint Charlie, created body paintings for Grace Jones, and designed street art in Tokyo. He contracted AIDS at the end of the 1980s and spent his last years attempting to describe the social consequences of the illness in his own artistic language. Keith Haring died in New York on February 16, 1990.
