Jean-Michel Basquiat author page

Jean-Michel Basquiat biography

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist known for his work as a painter and for his influence on late 20th-century art. He was born on 22 December 1960 in Brooklyn, New York, to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother.

As a teenager in the late 1970s, Basquiat gained attention as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, producing slogans and phrases on walls in Lower Manhattan. His work developed into painting and mixed media, incorporating text, symbols and figures, with influences from African, Caribbean, African-American and contemporary culture.

By the early 1980s, Basquiat was exhibiting paintings in galleries and was recognised internationally. His work addressed themes of race, identity, inequality and power. Between 1983 and 1985 he collaborated with Andy Warhol on a series of works.

Notable paintings include Untitled (1981), Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982), Untitled (1982) and Irony of Negro Policeman (1981). His art is characterised by expressive lines, vivid colours and motifs such as crowns, skeletal figures and fragmented text.

In 1983, Basquiat became the youngest artist to exhibit in Documenta in Kassel, Germany, at age 22. His works were shown in exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Zurich and Tokyo during the 1980s.

Basquiat died on 12 August 1988 in New York City. His painting Untitled (1982) sold at auction in 2017 for $110.5 million, setting a record for an American artist at that time.