Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) - Hollywood Africans - Giclée - 50x50 - Artestar licensed print *COA*

Giclée print of Jean-Michel Basquiat (*)
Reproduction of the work “Hollywood Africans” created by Basquiat in 1983.
Luxury edition on Monte Carlo high‑weight watercolor paper (300 g/m2).
Print authorized by Artestar New York.
Copyright of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Includes Certificate of Authenticity (COA).

Specifications:

- Support dimensions: 50 x 50 cm
- Stain (image) dimensions: 40 x 40 cm
- Condition: Excellent (this piece has never been framed or exhibited, and has always been kept in a professional art folder, thus offered in perfect condition).

The artwork will be carefully handled and packaged in reinforced cardboard. Shipping will be certified with a tracking number, handled by top transport companies (UPS DPD DHL FedEx).

The shipment will also include full insurance for the final value of the artwork with full reimbursement in case of loss or damage, at no cost to the buyer.

(*) Jean-Michel Basquiat was the first of the three children of Matilde Andrades and Gerard Basquiat. His father was a Haitian accountant of respectable financial solvency and his mother a Puerto Rican graphic designer of great prestige in her profession. Jean-Michel grew up in a torn family environment; his parents divorced and, due to this situation, he had to change schools many times. He studied at a private Catholic school, later at a public school, and finally, at 16, he entered City-As-School, a school for gifted teenagers, from which he was expelled for rebellion a year before graduating.
Already in his youth he came into contact with the subculture of the big city, related to drug use and street gangs. In 1977, together with Al Díaz, he entered the world of graffiti, painting on subway cars and in the SoHo areas, a New York neighborhood where art galleries proliferate.
A year later he left school one course before graduating from high school and left home to live for two years on the streets, in abandoned buildings or with his friends in Lower Manhattan, surviving by selling postcards and T-shirts that he himself decorated. He continued to devote himself to graffiti; his paintings and writings carried a lot of poetic and philosophical weight, but above all satirical. The pseudonym of his shared alter ego with Al Díaz was SAMO (short for “Same Old Shit,” meaning “the same old crap,” with which they signed their tags and graffiti with cryptic messages. The use of this name was decisive in his life.
These murals bore inscriptions such as “SAMO saves idiots” or “SAMO ends religious brainwashing, the politics of nothingness and false philosophy.” An article about SAMO’s street writing published in The Village Voice was the first sign that the art world was taking an interest in him.
The artist had several relationships that influenced his work; one of the most significant was with artist Andy Warhol.
Also, on the sentimental front, he was involved with several women, one of the most famous today being Madonna. Lower Manhattan was the area where they lived at that time; in 1982 they began spending more time together and going to parties at galleries. A common thread for them was that she mentions in an interview “I was a big fan of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.”
In 1988, exhibitions were installed in Paris and New York, and in April of that same year he tried to overcome his addictions and retreated to his home in Hawaii. He returned to New York in June, announcing that he had freed himself from his addictions, but on August 12, 1988, at the age of 27, he died of a heroin overdose, becoming the most successful visual artist in the history of Afro-descendant art. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Throughout his brief but intense artistic career he would hold more than 40 solo exhibitions and participate in around 100 group shows. Self-promotion and advertising appeal were priorities for Basquiat, as they had been for Andy Warhol or Julian Schnabel before him.
Neo-expressionism gradually overtook appropriationism, in part thanks to the economic strength that lifted art prices to high levels and, especially, painting, and partly due to the support of gallerists and collectors. However, the critics were not unanimous in their assessment, and it was common to decry the lack of theoretical basis in neo‑expressionist discourse. It was claimed that the art practiced by neo‑expressionists lacked any political or social meaning; it was merely merchandise and, therefore, subject to market fluctuations. Neo‑expressionist painting was reduced to a consumer product and, as such, to a creatively disqualified and vulgar act.