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Jean-Michel Basquiat
Neo-expressionist painter who reshaped contemporary art
He tagged the streets as SAMO, stormed the galleries, and forced the art world to see a young Black man as a master — not a curiosity.
The rise
Of Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, Basquiat dropped out of school at seventeen and began as a graffiti artist in Lower Manhattan under the tag SAMO. His raw, layered canvases — dense with anatomy, crowns, and Black history — caught the eye of gallerists and Andy Warhol.