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Jean-Michel Basquiat
American Painter/Sculptor
(1960 - 1988)

No single artist represented the contemporary art scene of the 1980s more than Jean-Michel Basquiat. He rose from an anonymous, homeless graffiti artist spraying cryptic social messages on building walls around New York City's SoHo and East Village in the late 1970s to become, within five years, one of the first African American artists to receive international recognition, with sales of his works grossing millions of dollars. Basquiat's was a life of improbable contradictions and myths. His frenetic and prodigious artistic output--he produced thousands of paintings and drawings over a seven-year span--was often arrested by periods of heroin-induced stupor. During his career, he threw lavish parties, treated crowds to dinners at expensive restaurants, and painted in suits by Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani. When he died from a cocaine-heroin overdose, he was alone and facedown on his bedroom floor on a hot August afternoon in 1988. He was 27.

Gigantic! 38.5" x 39.5"

Offset Lithograph on thick paper stock.

Printed in Italy in 2002 for sale during the retrospective of his work at Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, 2003.

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