"AT LARGE" BASQUIAT 1984ca ORIGINAL COLORED NUMBERED LITHOGRAPHIC PRINT

Description: Original print representing one of the famous lithograph on paper titled "At Large" (based on the original acrylic and oil stick painting of the same name by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1984).
 
Artwork Analysis:

Main Subjects: The composition is dominated by a large abstract globe, flanked at the bottom by a red head with primitive tribal features, typical of the iconography of the famous New York neo-expressionist artist and writer. On the left, the stylized silhouette of a nude body, seen from behind, is visible.
 
Signature and Edition: The printed signature "Jean-Michel Basquiat" is printed at the bottom right, surmounted by the famous three-pointed crown emblem, one of his most famous signatures. The pencil number (in this case, copy 36/150) is at the bottom left, indicating that it belongs to a later, authorized limited edition or was printed "after" (i.e., based on an original work by the master).
 
Date: 1984 approx. ( undated )

Dimensions: Paper size approx.: cm 34,8 x 49,6

Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
 
Basquiat first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al Diaz, writing enigmatic epigrams all over Manhattan, particularly in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side where disco, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop culture. By the early 1980s, his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever take part in Documenta in Kassel, Germany. At 22, he became one of the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his artwork in 1992.
 
Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting, and married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. He used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with his experiences in the black community, as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism.
 
Basquiat died at the age of 27 in 1988 of a heroin overdose. Since then, his work has steadily increased in value. In 2017, Untitled, a 1982 painting depicting a black skull with red-and-yellow rivulets, sold for a record-breaking $110.5 million, becoming one of the most expensive paintings ever purchased.