Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of the most vital and celebrated artists of the twentieth century. Though his life was brief, he produced a body of work containing extraordinary power and complexity. Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat was entirely self-taught. He first emerged in the late 1970s as part of New York City’s downtown graffiti scene before rapidly ascending to international prominence as a studio painter.
His canvases are instantly recognizable: dense with obsessive scribbling, anatomical diagrams, skulls, masks, and his signature crown motif. Drawing on his own Caribbean heritage alongside a sweeping convergence of African American, African, and Aztec cultural histories, Basquiat fused classical reference with pop iconography as he portrayed athletes, musicians, and other cultural figures with restless energy.
In the early 1980s, he forged a friendship and creative partnership with Andy Warhol, who became both mentor and collaborator in the charge of NYC’s art world. The depth and urgency of his paintings earned him widespread critical and commercial acclaim within and after his lifetime.
Basquiat died in 1988 at just 27 years old. His work is held in the permanent collections of the MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among many others. In 2017, Untitled (1982) sold at auction for $110.5 million, setting a record as the most expensive artwork by an American artist ever sold.