Basquiat Negro Athletes Skateboard Deck:
Limited edition Basquiat skate deck licensed by the Estate of Jean Michel Basquiat in conjunction with Artestar in 2018, featuring offset imagery of Basquiat's early Negro Athletes drawing. Makes for unique, standout pop wall-art that hangs with ease.
Maple wood skateboard deck. c.2018.
31 x 8 inches.
In original shrink-wrapping. Excellent overall condition.
From a sold out edition of 200 (un-numbered).
Trademark licensed by the estate of Basquiat on the reverse.
Published by world-renown streetwear brand, Diamond Supply. Licensed by Artestar in conjunction with the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential African-American artist who rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists into the realm of the New York gallery scene. His spray-painted crowns and scribbled words referenced everything from his Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, to political issues, pop-culture icons, and Biblical verse. The gestural marks and expressive nature of his work not only aligned him with the street art of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, but also the Neo-Expressionists Julian Schnabel and David Salle. “If you wanna talk about influence, man, then you've got to realize that influence is not influence,” he said of his process. “It's simply someone's idea going through my new mind.” Born on December 22, 1960 in Brooklyn, NY, Basquiat never finished high school but developed an appreciation for art as a youth, from his many visits to the Brooklyn Museum of Art with his mother. His early work consisted of spray painting buildings and trains in downtown New York alongside his friend Al Diaz. The artist’s tag was the now infamous pseudonym SAMO. After quickly rising to fame in the early 1980s, Basquiat was befriended by many celebrities and artists, including Andy Warhol, with whom he made several collaborative works. At only 27, his troubles with fame and drug addiction led to his tragic death from a heroin overdose on August 12, 1988 in New York, NY. The Whitney Museum of American Art held the artist’s first retrospective from October 1992 to February 1993. In 2017, after having set Basquiat’s auction record the previous year with a $57.3 million purchase, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa surpassed it, buying the artist’s Untitled (1982) at Sotheby's for $110.5 million. This set a new record for the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist's work. Today, Basquiat's works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others.
For complete inventory visit us here: https://www.1stdibs.com/dealers/lot-180/
Follow us @lot180
About Lot 180 Gallery:
Based in New York City, Lot 180 brings to market a treasure trove of carefully curated pop art and ultra-contemporary works for collectors of all levels. Curated by Ron Kosa, an advisor to the Basquiat: Boom For Real exhibition in London, Lot 180 excels in works from the late 1970's/early 1980's New York, and beyond.
