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Jean-Michel Basquiat
1980s Basquiat exhibition announcement (Basquiat Dau al Set Barcelona)
1989

Name: 1980s Basquiat exhibition announcement (Basquiat Dau al Set Barcelona)
Brand: Jean-Michel Basquiat
Price: 400 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Jean-Michel Basquiat Barcelona 1989: Rare vintage 1989 Jean-Michel Basquiat announcement card published on the occasion of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Dau al Set Galeria d'Art, Barcelona, Spain 1989. Offset printed announcement card. 4 x 8.25 inches. Very good overall vintage condition. Unsigned from an edition of unknown. Rare. Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960–1988), one of the first African American artists to reach international stature and wealth in the art world, had a short but impactful career. His rise to fame came quickly, as he was celebrated for his fusion of multicultural symbols, biting social commentary, and distinctive graphic style. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Basquiat drew and visited museums regularly from an early age, and many of his childhood interests—ranging from cartoons and Alfred Hitchcock films to anatomy and French and Spanish textbooks—would prove influential in his later work. Basquiat dropped out of school at the age of 17 and began creating art full time, gaining notoriety for his invented character SAMO (“Same Old Shit”), who made a living peddling “fake” religion. Basquiat depicted SAMO’s signature in graffiti art with cryptic messages in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and began painting on found materials, buildings, t-shirts, and commercial items. He delved into the urban 1980s avant-garde culture of New York, creating wildly expressive paintings which earned him considerable acclaim by his first solo exhibition in 1982. In 1983 he befriended his idol, Andy Warhol, and the two collaborated on several projects. Basquiat combined African, Aztec, Hispanic, and ancient Roman and Greek imagery with his own invented iconography and graphic marks in works that emphasized the physical and the gestural aspects of the artistic process. Ever conscious of his identity as an African-American in the art world, Basquiat’s work was rife with imagery commenting on race relations in America, and drawing from the culture of the African Diaspora. His prevalent drug use became a greater concern to his friends and colleagues in the mid-1980s, and the artist’s fiery temper and capriciousness increased, particularly when working with dealers or developing his oeuvre. Warhol’s death in 1987 deeply affected Basquiat, and he painted several final works in a frenzy, full of apocalyptic imagery but with a confident, mature style. He died of a drug overdose on August 12, 1988, ending a brief but highly influential life at the age of 27.

Creator:

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 - 1988, American)

Creation Year:

1989

Dimensions:

Height: 4 in (10.16 cm)Width: 8.25 in (20.96 cm)

Medium:

Offset

Movement & Style:

Pop Art

Period:

1980-1989

Condition:

Gallery Location:

NEW YORK, NY

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU354314448922

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Shop All Jean-Michel Basquiat

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Emerging from the New York City street-art scene, Jean-Michel Basquiat would become one of the most significant artists of the 20th century as he mixed hand-scrawled text, vibrant color, gestural brushwork and themes of social commentary in a prolific output of Neo-Expressionist paintings. Although his pieces always retained the improvisational energy of graffiti, Basquiat used deceptively uncomplicated motifs such as crowns and professional boxers to honor the majesty and power of Black men and place himself in that lineage. Today, Basquiat’s art is among the most expensive in the world, with his paintings regularly fetching tens of millions of dollars at auction.

Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian-American father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat’s parents treated him to regular visits to New York City museums and nurtured his early talent for drawing cartoons. When he was hit by a car while playing in the street, Basquiat’s mother gave him a copy of the lushly illustrated medical reference book Gray’s Anatomy. Later, human bones and body parts such as skulls and rib cages would prove potent as subject matter for his provocative and spirited visual explorations of social issues as well as his own vulnerability and the struggles he faced as a Black artist.

As a teenager, Basquiat spray-painted city bridges with friend Al Diaz, and their “SAMO” tag caught the eyes of local artists. He left home before he was 20, selling hand-painted sweatshirts and postcards in Lower Manhattan. Because Basquiat was homeless — sleeping in parks and girlfriends’ apartments — he couldn’t afford proper canvases, and instead transformed found materials, such as old doors and windows, with paint and layered paper. The works vividly juxtaposed a street-art style with forms inspired by Abstract Expressionism.

Basquiat’s first public exhibition was “The Times Square Show” in 1980, a landmark event for artists experimenting with the boundaries between the galleries and the streets, with pieces by Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf and Kiki Smith. His art soon garnered critical acclaim as well as the attention of collectors. Basquiat’s first solo show was at Soho’s Annina Nosei Gallery, in 1982, with another that year at Larry Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. His star continued to rise with multiple exhibitions in Europe, a 1983 feature in the Whitney Biennial and inclusion in a 1984 exhibition of painting at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. But he found that racist stereotypes persisted in press coverage of him, even as his profile expanded, and friends contend that he was exploited by collectors and art dealers. He battled a heroin addiction for years, and at the age of 27, Basquiat died from an accidental drug overdose on August 12, 1988.

Although it mainly spanned from 1980 to 1988, Basquiat’s career in visual art involved hundreds of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and other works. This included collaborations with Andy Warhol, with whom he created a series of paintings between 1983 and 1985. Basquiat’s art has been exhibited in almost every major art museum in the world, and in 2017 his 1982 Untitled painting was sold for $110.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction.

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