Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960, Brooklyn - August 12, 1988, New York, New York) was an American artist. He gained popularity, first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. Basquiat's paintings continue to influence modern day artists and command high prices.

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". The graphics were pithy messages such as "Plush safe he think; SAMO" and "SAMO is an escape clause". In December 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.

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 and then-unknown performer named Madonna in the fall of 1982. In 1982, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated extensively, eventually forging a close, if strained, friendship.

Basquiat died of mixed-drug toxicity (he had been combining cocaine and heroin, known as "speedballing") 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 (Ivory Coast, West Africa). After his death, a film biography entitled Basquiat was made, directed by Julian Schnabel, with actor Jeffrey Wright playing Basquiat.

Fun Fact: Basquiat makes an appearance in Blondies' 1980 'Rapture' videoclip.