Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, to a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, and became one of the most influential American artists of the late twentieth century. He first gained attention as half of the graffiti duo SAMO©, spray-painting cryptic, poetic phrases on buildings in Lower Manhattan. By 1981, at the age of twenty, he had transitioned to painting on canvas and was exhibiting alongside Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and other stars of the Neo-Expressionist movement.
Basquiat’s paintings are dense, chaotic, and electrifying: skulls, crowns, anatomical diagrams, words, and symbols jostle for space on canvases that vibrate with raw energy. His subjects range from black heroes and athletes to references to Leonardo’s anatomy, Gray’s Anatomy, and African-American history. Untitled (Skull) (1981) — a massive, ghostly head built from frantic strokes of paint, oil stick, and crayon — has become one of the most valuable paintings of the twentieth century. His friendship and collaboration with Andy Warhol in the mid-1980s produced some of the most fascinating artistic dialogues of the decade.
Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven, leaving behind a body of over 1,500 paintings and 600 drawings created in barely eight years. His work has gained steadily in critical and commercial stature, and his exploration of race, identity, and power in America speaks with even greater urgency today than it did during his brief, blazing life.