Jean Michel BasquiatHis mother, Matilde, was Puerto Rican and his father, Gerard Jean-Baptiste is of Haïtian origin and the former Minister of the Interior. At an early age, Basquiat displayed an aptitude for art and was encouraged by his mother to draw, paint, and to participate in other art-related activities. Around the age of seven Basquiat was hospitalized for injuries related to a car accident. When in the hospital Basquiat's mother gave him the book "Gray's Anatomy" as a gift to pass the time. Basquiat loved the diagrams in the book and later began to inspire him in his artwork and also helped create the band "Gray".In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray-painting graffiti art on slum buildings in lower Manhattan, adding the infamous signature of "SAMO" or "SAMO shit" (i.e. "same ol' shit"). The graphics were pithy text messages such as "Plush safe he think; SAMO†and ""SAMO is an escape clause." In December of 1978, the Village Voice published an article about the writings. The SAMO project ended with the epitaph SAMO IS DEAD written on the walls of SoHo buildings.In 1978, Basquiat dropped out of Edward R. Murrow High School and left home, a year before graduating. He moved into the city and lived with friends, surviving by selling T-shirts and postcards on the street. By 1979, however, Basquiat gained a certain celebrity status amidst the thriving art scene of Manhattan's East Village, for his regular appearances on Glenn O'Brian's live public-access cable show, TV Party.In June 1980, he first started to gain recognition when he participated in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition, sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated (Colab).In 1981, poet, art critic and cultural provocateur Rene Ricard published "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine, helping to launch Basquiat's career to an international stage.During the next few years, he continued exhibiting his works around New York alongside artists such as Keith Haring, Barbara Kruger, as well as internationally, promoted by his gallerists Annina Nosei, Vrej Baghoomian, Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger. By 1982, Basquiat was showing regularly alongside Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, thus becoming part of a loose-knit group that art-writers, curators, and collectors would soon be calling the Neo-expressionist movement. He started dating an aspiring performer named Madonna in the fall of '82. In 1982, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated extensively, eventually forging a close, if strained, friendship.By 1984, many of Basquiat's friends were concerned about his excessive drug use and increasingly erratic behaviour, including signs of paranoia. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit by this point, starting from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New York's underground.In 1985 Basquiat appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in a feature entitled "New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist".As Basquiat's international success heightened, his works were shown in solo exhibitions across major European capitals.Tragically, Jean-Michel Basquiat died of mixed drug toxicity(He had been combining cocaine and heroin) in his Great Jones Street loft/studio in 1988 several days before what would have been Basquiat's second trip to the Côte d'Ivoire.He is survived by his father, Gerard, and mother, Matilde, both of Brooklyn, and two sisters, Lisane and Jeanine
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