JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
(New York, USA 1960 - New York, USA 1988)
Untitled (Everlast)
acrylic, oil and organic pigments on postcard, 17.78x12.7 cm
executed in 1982
The work is accompanied by an authentic released in 2000 by the Authentication Committee
of the Summer of Jean-Michel Basquiat
The work is registered with the Authentication Committee of the Estate of Jean-Michel
Basquiat, with the number n. 10874
provenance
Private collection, Usa
Private collection, Arezzo
Before even starting to paint together in the mid-eighties, Andy Warhol e
Jean-Michel Basquiat shared a similar interest in certain subjects and themes.
They were both fascinated by the combination of texts and writings or printed and images, and
both attracted subjects of popular culture. In his fundamental works of the first
sixties Warhol, he had repeatedly used newspaper titles, advertisements, brands of
factory and prices of products, comics characters and celebrities as subjects of his
paintings and his drawings. Basquiat's work, created twenty years later, was based on
similar elements, but approached from a different perspective. It was a fortuitous and prophetic event
when the two artists were sent to work together. In 1984 Bruno Bischofberger
he asked Warhol, Basquait and Francesco Clemente to create collaborative paintings.
Warhol appreciated Basquiat's company and creativity, and vice versa, and between the two
he established a strong friendship, not only on a professional but also on a personal basis. From this
moment they continued to collaborate, for many years making important canvases, and how
bears witness to this work by Basquiat, linked to boxing and the forerunner of the exhibition
they worked together at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in the following years. It was Basquait a
ask the photographer Halsband if he had photographed a traditional boxing style poster
that he and Warhol wanted for a new show. The result, literally, is the
history.
In 1982, in the United States, his first personal exhibition took place in the
gallery owner Annina Noesei in New York, in the same month the works of Basquiat are included
in the collective Trasnavanguardia: Italy / America set up by Achille Bonito Oliva in the
Civic Gallery of Modena. The exhibition offers a new generation of artists born from
different cultures in which the name of Basquiat appears alongside the neo-expressionists
Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, David Deutsch, David Salle and Julian
Schnabel. In June he is invited to participate in Documenta 7, in Kassel, a younger artist
among the 176 present, his works not only appear in the category of new levers and therefore
with Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, but they are flanked by the works of artists now
such as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Gerard Richter, Cy Twombly and Andy
Warhol.
His first "official" works, starting with those made between 1979 and 1980, favored the
writing or a quick, brute image, traced with the urgency of the scream, of the
testimony, of the private ostentation of every aesthetic pleasure. The concept
it works indifferently on paper and on canvas: in the first case it seems to acquire sometimes
a more immediate and perhaps logical impact, this being the most suitable support for
welcome a similar gestural contribution. The trace of a caricatured character emerges
on his head, or on the back of his works, a three-pointed crown is depicted.
On the crown was expressed, the friend Francesco Clemente: "the crown of Jean-Michel has
trepunte, because it is triple its royal lineage: poet, musician and great
boxing champion. "(Luciano Caprile, Jean-Michel Basquiat The word and the image,
exhibition catalog Museum of Modern Art City of Lugano, Jean-Michel Basquiat).