Keith Haring mural goes up for auction after being cut out of Catholic youth centre

A mural painted by Keith Haring inside a Catholic youth centre is headed for auction.

The mural, once located in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has been cut out and will be put on Bonhams’ auction block in November, The New York Times reports.

Haring, who died in 1990, painted it in the early Eighties inside a building housing Grace House, a Catholic youth organisation located on 108th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, in the Morningside Heights neighbourhood, as previously noted by DNAinfo.

The mural begins with Haring’s “Radiant Baby” figure, a symbol featuring a crawling infant surrounded by rays of light that is one of the most recognisable aspects of Haring’s work.

Over the course of one evening, Haring added several other figures seemingly dancing up the stairs, covering two floors.

The nearby Church of the Ascension, which had control of the building, decided to sell it, prompting the extraction of Haring’s work, which reportedly cost about $900,000.

The preservation of Haring’s mural had become a topic of concern since speculation that the church would sell or lease the building emerged in 2016.

Haring was involved in the Jesus Movement of the Seventies as a teenager. The experience later influenced his work and aesthetic.

According to The New York Times, Haring ended up painting the Grace House mural after befriending some of the organisation members’ at the Paradise Garage nightclub, a historic LGBT+ site in SoHo.