Jean-Michel Basquiat - Under the Influence New York Thursday, September 19, 2013 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles

  • 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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46

Light Cone

1986
oil stick on envelope
7 1/8 x 4 in. (18.1 x 10.2 cm.)

Estimate
$15,000 - 20,000 

Sold for $16,250

Contact Specialist
Benjamin Godsill
Head of Sale bgodsill@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1260

Under the Influence

New York 19 September 2013 2pm