Legends Never Die: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rare Works Descend Upon Los Angeles

Jean-Michel Basquiat has become one of the most culturally significant artists of all time since his death in 1988, two years shy of his 30th birthday.

It’s hard to believe that as revered as he is, the artist only worked for a decade, leaving behind over 600 paintings and 1,500 drawings highly sought after by art collectors worldwide. The City of Angels is the latest city to host a collection of his work.

Basquiat’s career and life are most commonly connected to his time in New York, having been born and raised in Brooklyn; however, his relationship with art dealer Larry Gagosian brought him to Venice Beach, California, in the fall of 1982. Captivated by the then-21-year-old’s talent, Gagosian offered to house him and helped to bring his first West Coast exhibit to life, followed by a second show that featured new paintings in 1983. At the time, the art pioneer was dating a relatively unknown singer named Madonna, who would drive him around the eccentric neighborhoods of West Hollywood, where he loved to shop but often cut his adventures short to return to his canvases.

“He never stopped painting,” Gagosian says. “He was able to be very productive in Los Angeles.” According to The Los Angeles Times, Basquiat spent about a year and a half living in the city for long stretches of time between 1982 and 1984—at first with Gagosian at a Market Street house he offered the artist and then in a nearby studio he leased where he produced about 100 paintings. “L.A. was a place for him to be by the ocean and just paint,” says his sister Lisane Basquiat. “He loved L.A. I think it calmed him.”

Now, some of Basquiat’s little-seen works have returned to his city of repose thanks to the work of the late artist’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, who have run his estate since 2013. “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” opens to the public Friday in four cavernous gallery spaces in Downtown Los Angeles and features 200 works, much of which has never been seen before this show. One section of the show, “1960,” includes Basquiat’s framed birth announcement and his hand-drawn family tree. It also features digitized Super 8 films of Basquiat and his family. One shows the artist as a toddler, in a beret, tromping along a Brooklyn sidewalk; another has Basquiat and his younger sisters frolicking in Prospect Park, according to the LA Times. “What people don’t always realize,” Lisane said during a walk-through of the exhibition, “is that he wasn’t just this dude who sprung up from the streets, like his story began when he left home. He actually came from a family. And there was a lot of love in our home.”

Art lovers and Jean-Michel Basquiat fans can also take in paintings that pay homage to his heroes like Grace Jones, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Sugar Ray Robinson, amongst others, in a section called “Royalty.” On display will also be what his family and many historians consider his last known work, “Dry Spell” (1988), and his iconic work, “Cabeza” (1982). The exhibit runs through July 31.