"GENERAL ELECTRIC" BASQUIAT 1986ca ORIGINAL COLORED NUMBERED LITHOGRAPHIC PRINT

Description: Original print representing one of the famous lithograph titled "GE" (or "General Electric"), a limited-edition reproduction of the celebrated original work created by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol between 1984 and 1985.
 
Work Analysis: Collaboration: This work represents the perfect intersection of Pop Art and Neo-Expressionism. Andy Warhol created the background by projecting and painting the famous General Electric multinational company logo in blue, while Basquiat subsequently added his own graphic strokes, scattered alphabet letters, and his signature stylized black anthropomorphic figure in the center.
 
Signature and Edition: As with the previous artwork, the printed signature "Jean-Michel Basquiat" appears at the bottom right, surmounted by the three-pointed crown logo. The pencil number of the piece (from a print run of 300) is at the bottom left.
 
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.

Andy Warhol (born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist and filmmaker. Widely regarded as the most important artist of the second half of the 20th century, Warhol's practice spanned various media, including painting, filmmaking, photography, publishing, and performance art. A leading figure in the Pop art movement, his work explores the relationship between advertising, consumerism, mass media, and celebrity culture. His embrace of mechanical reproduction challenged traditional boundaries between high and low culture. He is also credited with popularizing the expression "15 minutes of fame".