Jean-Michel Basquiat - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Tuesday, November 10, 2015 | Phillips

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York Auction 10 November 2015 11am

  • Provenance

    Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
    Private Collection, France, 1985
    By descent to the present owner

  • 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.

    View More Works

233

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Untitled

1981
oilstick on paper
19 3/4 x 16 in. (50.2 x 40.6 cm)
Signed "Jean-Michel Basquiat" on the reverse.
This work is registered under inventory number 3576 in the Annina Nosei Gallery Archive, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York.

Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

Sold for $149,000

Contact Specialist
John McCord
Head Day Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1261

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York Auction 10 November 2015 11am