Jean-Michel Basquiat pictured in his New York Studio, 1992.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in 1960, and he experienced a meteoric rise to stardom before he died of a drug-overdose at the age of just 27. Despite his short career, he achieved both reputation and success during his lifetime, and his fame has only continued to grow in the decades since then.
Basquiat is currently one of the most sought-after artists in the world. His prints make up 27% of his work sold at auction, and they’re especially popular in the US and the UK. The majority of Basquiat prints sell for between £100 and £500, but they regularly fetch up to £50,000, and some reach even higher prices.
Below is a list of the seven most sought-after Jean-Michel Basquiat prints. If you own a Basquiat print and would like to find out more about how to sell it, get in touch with Mark Littler today.
Untitled
This is a silkscreen print created in 1983, and it was sold by Sotheby’s in November 2022 for £2,522,370. The series of prints was inspired by a collage Basquiat created from pages of his notebook, which he then drew over in black oilstick. The mixture of text and images is typical of Basquiat, who read widely in all three of the languages he spoke, and whose desire for knowledge seemed endless.
When making the prints, the artist chose to invert the colours of the original work so that a white, mask-like face stares out from a black background overlaid with white writing and diagrams. According to Fred Hoffman, who helped Basquiat create the silkscreens, this decision reflects Basquiat’s desire to explore a number of “suggestive dichotomies, including wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience.”
Untitled Sold by Sotheby’s in 2022
Back Of The Neck
Basquiat had a deep interest in the human body and its anatomy, most probably as a result of an accident he had at the age of eight; he was hit by a car and sustained multiple internal injuries, as well as a broken arm. He was hospitalised for a month and had to have a splenectomy, and his mother gave him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy to keep him entertained as he recuperated. The information and images in the 19th century reference book had a profound effect on the young artist. Its influence can be found in much of his later work, including Back of the Neck, which was sold by William Doyle in November 2023 for £741,883, and which remains one of Basquiat’s most popular prints on today’s market.
Back of the Neck Sold by William Doyle in 2023
Tuxedo
Basquiat’s trademark crown sits proudly at the top of this symbolic print, which was sold for £610,000 by Sotheby’s in February 2012. The print was created using the same techniques as Untitled (1983) – it was based on a collection of individual drawings on white paper, and Basquiat chose to invert black and white in the final silkscreen prints.
Fred Hoffman helped Basquiat create both Tuxedo and Untitled, and he believes this inversion allowed the young artist to question “certain social and cultural assumptions.” Hoffman states that the decision “demonstrated to both [Basquiat] and the world that he possessed the capacity… to turn a world dominated by white into one where black dominates.”
Tuxedo Sold by Sotheby’s in 2012
Anatomy
Basquiat’s preoccupation with the human body is again clear to see in these 18 prints from 1982, which were sold by Sotheby’s in October 2017 for £227,307. The images depict various different parts of the body, including the scapula, pelvis, femur, and skull, each labelled in a similar way to a medical textbook. The white-on-black images are oddly stark compared with the wild, explosive pieces usually associated with Basquiat. The monochromatic simplicity is effective in furthering the medical aspect of these works by being evocative of a series of X-rays.
Anatomy Sold by Sotheby’s in 2017
Untitled
This 1986 monotype was sold by Sotheby’s in September 2018 for £220,254. The enigmatic image dates from just two years before Basquiat died; by this time, he had achieved notable success in the art world and was earning vast sums of money, but his drug habit had started to spiral out of control, and he eventually died from an overdose in 1988.
The raw, passionate energy of Untitled (1986) and the jagged, scrawling lines are typical of Basquiat’s graffiti-style art, partly inspired by the years he spent tagging Manhattan as SAMO with fellow artist, Al Diaz. Though the two artists fell out and stopped working together, Basquiat continued to use the SAMO moniker intermittently by himself, and Diaz resurrected it after Donald Trump’s presidential election in 2016.
Untitled Sold by Sotheby’s in 2018
Flexible
Much of Basquiat’s work deals with racism, colonialism, and cultural heritage, often drawing on his own experiences as a young black man in 1980s New York. Flexible was sold by Sotheby’s in July 2023 for £174,517, and it is one of several Basquiat works in which the figure of a griot – a West-African storyteller or poet – is central. Griots play an important role in communities by passing on oral traditions, and they tend to hold positions of respect and power.
Basquiat’s deep interest in narratives and in black history and culture is highlighted in this print. In Flexible, the griot is a figure of power and knowledge, with his arms forming a symbolic, never-ending loop above his head, perhaps suggesting a makeshift crown, or even a halo.
Flexible Sold by Sotheby’s in 2023
Untitled (Per Capita)/Untitled (Head)/Untitled (Ernok)/Untitled (Rinso)
These four screenprints were sold by Sotheby’s in April 2016 for £167,352. Each print uses Basquiat’s trademark scribbled lines and enigmatic fusion of diagrams and text, executed with his usual frenetic energy, and two of the artist’s favourite symbols – the crown and the skull – are featured prominently. These prints are brilliant examples of Basquiat’s vivid imagination, and of the way he mixed street art and contemporary societal issues with his deep interest in history, art, and literature, making him one of the most unique artists of the 20th century.
Untitled (Per Capita)/Untitled (Head)/Untitled (Ernok)/Untitled (Rinso) Sold by Sotheby’s in 2016
