Orlando Museum of Art

By the time of his tragic death in 1988 at the age of twenty-seven, Jean-Michel Basquiat had become an art world celebrity and pop culture icon. Basquiat first achieved fame in the late 1970s as graffiti artist in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. By the early 1980s, his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally and today he is regarded as one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century.

Heroes and Monsters presents a rare group of paintings from a private collection which are being shown for the first time at the Orlando Museum of Art. The 26 works were created in 1982 while the artist was living temporarily in Los Angeles, California. This is considered by many to be Basquiat’s best period in his short career. By 1982, he had established his distinctive raw expressionistic style and the symbolic vocabulary that would continue to recur in his work. His paintings often contrasted powerful forces within society and perhaps within himself as seen in Heroes and Monsters: The Jean-Michel Basquiat Venice Collection.

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