Javier martinez basquiat biography

He took the 1980s art world by storm – and then at just 27, he was gone.

Alastair Sooke looks back at the short life and stunning work of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Everybody loves the story of a prodigy. As a teenager, Van Dyck exhibited tremendous facility with a paintbrush in Rubens’s studio.

In 1901, the 19-year-old Picasso announced himself with preternatural self-confidence in a blazing self-portrait inscribed “Yo – Picasso”. These rank among the most exciting moments in the history of art.

So does the meteoric rise of the ultimately ill-starred American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who mesmerised New York’s hard-boiled art world during the ’80s, and is now the subject of a new retrospective containing around 100 artworks at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.