Jean-Michel Basquiat Works and Portraits Poster 1997

Year1997

Not Signed 

Condition Excellent 

Framed with PlexiglassDouble Sided Black Frame w/ White Mat 

Purchased fromAuction House 2023 

Provenance / HistoryThis flyer promotes a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition of his works and portraits in Japan. The flyer is doubled sided featuring a pugilistic Jean Michel on the front of the flyer ready to do battle. On the reverse, there are a number of photos featuring some of the works in the exhibition as well as personal photos. The copy on the flyer is in Japanese. 

Story / Additional InfoOnly a very few of these Japanese flyers have survived making this example rare and collectible. Approx. 500 made. 

Certificate of AuthenticityArt Brokerage 

LID165534

Jean Michel Basquiat - United States

Jean-Michel Basquiat. American. 1966-1980. Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential African-American artist who rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists into the realm of the New York gallery scene, his spray-painted crowns and scribbled words, referenced everything from his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, to political issues, pop-culture icons, and Biblical verse. The gestural marks and expressive nature of his work not only aligned him with the street art of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, but also the Neo-Expressionists Julian Schnabel and David Salle. “If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence,” he said of his process. “It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.” Born on December 22, 1960 in Brooklyn, NY, Basquiat never finished high school but developed an appreciation for art as a youth, from his many visits to the Brooklyn Museum of Art with his mother. His early work consisted of spray painting buildings and trains in downtown New York alongside his friend Al Diaz. The artist’s tag was the now infamous pseudonym SAMO. After quickly rising to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was befriended by many celebrities and artists, including Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborative works. At only 27, his troubles with fame and drug addiction led to his tragic death from an overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY. The Whitney Museum of American Art held the artist’s first retrospective from October 1992 to February 1993. In 2017, after having set Basquiat’s auction record the previous year with a $57.3 million purchase, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa surpassed it, buying the artist’s Untitled (1982) at Sotheby's for $110.5 million. This set a new record for the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist's work. Today, Basquiat's works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others. Authenticated Listings wanted.