Jean Michel Basquiat was a painter who focused on portraying ideas about class struggle, colonialism, and political commentary. The dichotomies expressed in his work such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience formed a style that blended abstraction, figuration, poetry, and social critique. A large portion of his work was focused on historical experiences faced by the black community, and how the intersected with modern life, and his own experiences growing up in New York with Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage.

 

His highly individualistic style has been labeled as neo-expressionist, and attracted the likes of two of his contemporaries, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol.  Basquiat’s career was fast paced and short lived due to an untimely death, but his legacy lives on with a large body of work, a retrospective in 1992 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, influential following, and record breaking pieces sold at auction.