Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988, born Brooklyn, New York) was a painter whose meteoric rise from the streets of downtown Manhattan to the centre of the international art world remains one of the defining stories of late 20th century art. Beginning his public presence as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, he transitioned to canvas by 1980, producing a body of work of startling density and originality rooted in neo-expressionism, street culture, and a deep engagement with questions of race, identity, and power.
His paintings are characterized by layered imagery, fragmented text, and a raw visual energy that drew on sources as varied as jazz, anatomy, and African American history. By the early 1980s his work had attracted the attention of major galleries and collectors internationally, and his celebrated collaboration with Andy Warhol further cemented his position at the intersection of fine art and popular culture. Before his death at the age of twenty-seven, Basquiat produced approximately one thousand paintings and two thousand drawings.
His work is held in the permanent collections of The Broad, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, among many others. In 2017, his Untitled (1982) sold at auction for $110.5 million, setting a record for an American artist at the time.