Launching the partnership between the Peanuts Global Artist Collective and the Houston Arts Alliance, Kenny Scharf unveiled The Heavens and the Earth on April 25 at Space Center Houston during NASA’s 50th Anniversary celebrations of Apollo 10. To mark this milestone, Scharf unveiled his out-of-this-world rendition of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, uniquely-wrapped around an 18’x15’ NASA ISS Module.

Muralist, painter, sculptor, and installation artist Kenny Scharf is best known for his fantastical, large-scale paintings of anthropomorphic animals and imagined creatures. Scharf was a part of the 1980s East Village Art movement, along with his good friend and fellow street artist Keith Haring. The artist says he has been influenced by all 20th-century art movements, including Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, the latter reflected in his appropriation of cartoon characters from television shows like the Flintstones and Jetsons and his humorous depiction of snack food. Scharf ’s oftentimes dense and frenetic compositions also echo a Baroque sensibility.

Works by Scharf are in the collections of such major New York institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Jewish Museum. Internationally, works by Scharf have been collected by Mexico’s Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; and the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.