Jean-Michel Basquiat - New Now New York Tuesday, February 28, 2017 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist in 1982

  • Catalogue Essay

    The following selection of works belong to the personal collection of American artist David Bowes. Now based in Turin, Italy, Bowes was an integral member of Manhattan’s 1980s art scene. Befriending artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and George Condo, he worked alongside them and even, in some cases, shared studio space. Each of the unique works in this group, all gifted to Bowes from the artists themselves, represent special relationships forged during a pioneering time in the New York art world.

  • 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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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAVID BOWES

58

Venus

Xerox and acrylic on canvas
12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm.)
Executed in 1982.

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $125,000

Contact Specialist
Rebekah Bowling
Head of Sale
New York
+ 1 212 940 1250

New Now

New York Auction 28 February 2017