Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn. His father was Haitian and his mother of Puerto Rican descent. As a child he already drew constantly and visited New York’s museums with his mother. Then, when he was seven, she gave him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. The book would thus shape his lasting vocabulary of bodies, bones and organs.
In the late 1970s, he and his friend Al Diaz covered the walls of Lower Manhattan with enigmatic aphorisms. They signed them SAMO©. These poetic, caustic phrases soon intrigued the art world. A key figure of the downtown underground, he founded the band Gray and frequented the Mudd Club. He also appeared on Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. In addition, he sold hand-painted postcards and clothing, before devoting himself entirely to painting.
In 1981, the exhibition New York/New Wave at P.S.1 brought him to public attention. His rise was then meteoric: Annina Nosei in New York, Larry Gagosian in Los Angeles, Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich. In 1982, he became the youngest artist invited to documenta 7 in Kassel.
His paintings combine words, signs, crowns, skeletal figures and masks. They summon African American history, jazz, boxing, antiquity, anatomy and popular culture. Basquiat crossed out, repeated and compiled lists. The canvas thus became a space of thought, where racism, power, money and death can be read. In 1984 and 1985, he painted four-handed works with Andy Warhol. They were shown at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1985.
His technique was as free as his iconography. He painted in acrylic and oilstick on canvas, but also on doors, fences and stretchers with exposed crossbars. He also incorporated collage and photocopies of his own drawings. Music played an essential role, from the bebop of Charlie Parker to that of Dizzy Gillespie. Black boxers, musicians and athletes, from Joe Louis to Sugar Ray Robinson, became the crowned heroes of his pantheon.
He died in New York on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27. Yet he left a considerable body of paintings and drawings, produced in less than ten years. Major retrospectives followed: the Whitney Museum in 1992, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2010, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2018. In 2017, Untitled (1982) became one of the most expensive works ever sold at auction.
Basquiat’s name is closely tied to the history of Galerie Enrico Navarra. The gallery published his catalogue raisonné in 1996, reissued in an expanded edition in 2000. Monographs on his drawings (1999) and paintings (2010) later followed, then The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2017). In 2006, the gallery organized Jean-Michel Basquiat in Shanghai. In 2022, Galerie Gradiva hosted Résonance, Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Kongo Universe. His drawings were set in dialogue with powerful figures from the Congo Basin. In 2025, Untitled was presented at The Intermission gallery.
Artemis Baltoyanni and Doriano Navarra are pleased to present the exhibition of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat: Untitled at The Intermission Gallery from May 22 to August 2, 2025
From September 7 to November 19, 2022, the Gradiva gallery, in collaboration with the Bernard Dulon and Enrico Navarra galleries, presents a unique aesthetic experiment under the exhibition title «Résonance, Jean-Michel Basquiat et l’Univers Kongo». In its spaces located at 9 quai Voltaire, it invites visitors to let themselves be guided by emotion in the face of the formal dialogue it establishes between the drawings of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) and powerful nkisi nkonde power figures from the Kongo cultural sphere originating from the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. The exhibition offers a deep dive into the heart of the works and their soul.
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