Basquiat

New York , America

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist from New York known for paintings that combined raw figuration, fragmented text, anatomical references and symbols drawn from history, music and Black identity. Emerging from the downtown New York art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he developed a distinctive visual language of crowns, skulls, diagrams and repeated words. His work examined race, power, colonialism, wealth, mortality and artistic fame through layered, energetic compositions. Influenced by jazz, street culture and African diasporic history, Basquiat became a central figure in Neo-Expressionism and remains one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

“I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”