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Jean-Michel Basquiat
PainterKnown for:
Neo-Expressionist painting combining text and image; Untitled (1982)
Education:
No formal art training; self-taught
Jean-Michel Basquiat began painting graffiti in Lower Manhattan under the tag SAMO before his Neo-Expressionist canvases - dense with text, anatomy, crowns, and crossed-out words - entered the gallery circuit through the Annina Nosei Gallery in 1982, when he was 21. He died of a heroin overdose in 1988 at 27. His Untitled (1982) sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby's in 2017, the highest price ever paid at auction for work by an American artist.
Jean-Michel Basquiat's Gear List(1)
Winsor & Newton
Connection note
Basquiat worked with Winsor & Newton oil paint in his studio paintings; his use of the brand is documented in accounts of his studio practice and in catalog essays accompanying major retrospectives, including the 2017 Barbican retrospective.
Product description
Winsor & Newton has manufactured artists' oil colours in London since 1832, and its professional-grade line remains one of the most widely used in studio painting worldwide. The range covers more than 120 pigments, each ground in cold-pressed linseed or safflower oil to a standard of consistency that has changed little since the nineteenth century. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon were among the many painters who worked from the Winsor & Newton range throughout their careers.
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Last updated March 20, 2026
