Michel Basquiat Hollywood Africans
Condition reports and provenance available upon request
About This Work
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s *Hollywood Africans* stands as a pivotal painting in his early 1980s practice, merging Neo-Expressionist urgency with the graphic immediacy of street-derived mark-making. Working in acrylic and oilstick with scrawled text, halos, and schematic figures, Basquiat constructs a dense visual field that reads like both portrait and protest. The work confronts the racialized stereotypes and erasures experienced by Black artists in the American entertainment industry, turning the language of labels into a critique of how identity is commodified. Its raw, improvisational surface—layered, crossed out, and reasserted—embodies Basquiat’s signature strategy: using fragmentation to expose power structures while reclaiming visibility and cultural agency.
About the Artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat ( BAH-skee-AH(T), French: [ʒɑ̃ miʃɛl baskja]; 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, alongsi...
View Full Artist Profile →Zebra One Gallery
Contemporary Art • Hampstead, London
Established 1976 • 50 years of excellence in contemporary art • Professional authentication and provenance research