Jean-Michel Basquiat - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Monday, February 10, 2014 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist.

  • Catalogue Essay

    "I never had any doubt that he was a genius, not after I saw him with a pencil in his hand. Watching him draw or paint was a revelation." - Glenn O'Brien, Who Was that Masked Man? in Basquiat, P.II

  • Artist Biography

    Jean-Michel Basquiat

    American • 1960 - 1988

    One of the most famous American artists of all time, Jean-Michel Basquiat first gained notoriety as a subversive graffiti-artist and street poet in the late 1970s. Operating under the pseudonym SAMO, he emblazoned the abandoned walls of the city with his unique blend of enigmatic symbols, icons and aphorisms. A voracious autodidact, by 1980, at 22-years of age, Basquiat began to direct his extraordinary talent towards painting and drawing. His powerful works brilliantly captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s New York underground scene and catapulted Basquiat on a dizzying meteoric ascent to international stardom that would only be put to a halt by his untimely death in 1988.

    Basquiat's iconoclastic oeuvre revolves around the human figure. Exploiting the creative potential of free association and past experience, he created deeply personal, often autobiographical, images by drawing liberally from such disparate fields as urban street culture, music, poetry, Christian iconography, African-American and Aztec cultural histories and a broad range of art historical sources.

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145

Untitled

1982
oilstick on paper
56.8 x 38.1 cm. (22 2/5 x 15 in.)
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the authentication committee of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat and is signed by Gerald Basquiat.

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Head of Sale
hhighley@phillips.com
+ 44 20 7318 4061

Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Day Sale 11 February 2014 2pm