Jean-Michel Basquiat: Untitled (1982)
Private collection, courtesy Tony Shafrazi Gallery
© 2009 Jean-Michel Basquiat / ProLitteris, Zurich
May 9 to September 5, 2010
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 –1988) was one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities in the art world. After starting on the New York underground scene as a graffiti sprayer, musician and actor, he began to devote himself to painting at nineteen. His highly expressive, energetic work soon found wide admiration. Supported by Andy Warhol, he advanced to become an internationally acclaimed star. He was the youngest Documenta participant ever, and exhibited at Art Basel, the Venice Biennale, and various famous galleries. The son of immigrants from the Caribbean, Basquiat became the first black artist to make a highlevel breakthrough. He collaborated with Keith Haring, Francisco Clemente, Debbie Harry, and many other stars. In the space of only eight years, he created an extensive oeuvre of about 1000 paintings and 2000 drawings before his tragic death at the age of only twenty-seven. To mark his fiftieth birthday, the Fondation Beyeler is devoting a large retrospective to Jean-Michel Basquiat, comprising more than 100 paintings, works on paper, and objects from renowned museums and private collections around the world. His works, populated by comic-like figures, skeletal silhouettes, curious everyday objects, and poetic slogans, are highly colorful and powerful. They blend pop culture and cultural history into critical and ironic commentaries on consumer society and social injustice. The exhibition brings together many of Basquiat’s major works and illustrates the development of this legendary art scene star. The exhibition catalogue, published in a German and English edition by Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart contains essays by Dieter Buchhart (exhibition curator with Samuel Keller), Glenn O’Brien, and Robert Storr, and an interview with Basquiat by Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis, previously published only as a video film (1985), 244 pages, 334 illustrations, CHF 68.
