Jean-Michel Basquiat In Relaxed Pose

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist and musician. He first achieved notoriety as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti group who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City during the late 1970s where the hip hop, post-punk and street art movements had coalesced.

By the 1980s he was exhibiting his Neo-expressionist and Primitivist paintings in galleries and museums internationally.

He was close friends with Andy Warhol

And he dated Madonna before she became uber-famous