With a major exhibition in Rome that includes his most important works, Chiostro del Bramante pays tribute the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, iconic and controversial figure of the New York culture of the ’80s.
Believe it or not,
I can actually draw.
Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk, and street art movements had coalesced.
By the 1980s, he was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally.
The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.
Basquiat’s art focused on suggestive dichotomies, such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience.
He appropriated poetry, drawing, painting, married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique.
More than 75 works are characterized mostly by large canvases and carried out by young American writers, tell of Basquiat’s relationship with his native New York and those roads that will provide the blank canvas on which the artist by afro-American origins affect the distinctive and indelible traits of his art.
A crown, recurrent icon in his masterpieces and symbol of pride in belonging to the Afro-American culture, to celebrate an immortal genius.
When
From Mar 24th to Jul 02nd 2017
Monday to Friday 10 am > 8 pm
Saturday and Sunday 10 am > 9 pm
Ticket service is available until 1 hour before closing.
Where
CHIOSTRO DEL BRAMANTE
Via Arco della Pace 5, 00186, Rome
Photo © Jean-Michel Basquiat
