Artist Abstract:
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) was a once-in-a-generation virtuoso whose work defines the storied 1980s art scene in New York. A native New Yorker, Basquiat was a self-taught artist who was raised in the halls of the city’s many museums and galleries. He spent countless hours as a child visiting the Met, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum, and displayed a preternatural talent for art from a young age. His youthful drawings and paintings eventually developed into a signature style that melded elements of Pop and neo-expressionism with his own distinct vocabulary that he honed on the streets of the city. Basquiat’s earliest recognition came as a graffiti artist, when he began tagging the streets of the Lower East Side under his tag name, SAMO. Alongside other artists of the time like Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, and his close friend Keith Haring, Basquiat was instrumental in the elevation of street art to a genre of intellectual consideration.
Born in Brooklyn, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a lifelong New Yorker whose impact on the city continues to resonate to this day. His career, though short, was prolific, beginning on the streets of the Lower East Side when he was still a teenager. As his distinctive graffiti became renowned across the steely downtown scene of the early 1980s, art world luminaries from Andy Warhol to Francesco Clemente, as well as future musical icons like Fab Five Freddy, Debbie Harry, and Madonna championed his work. Along with his many friends in the underground world of street art, New York provided a rich cultural context that provided Basquiat an artistic education and a community. His painting practice developed alongside his tags, drawing the attention of legendary SoHo gallerist Mary Boone, who began representing him in the mid-1980s, until his tragic passing in 1988, a few months shy of his 28th birthday. His work is collected by preeminent museums both nationally and globally; among them are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.