Basquiat (2001) Painting by Nelsón Cabán

Done in 2001, one my first portraits and my only to date to feature the visage of Jean-Michel Basquiat. A self-taught artist, Basquiat began drawing at an early age on sheets of paper his father, an accountant, brought home from the office. As he delved deeper into his creative side, his mother strongly encouraged to pursue artistic talents. Basquiat first attracted attention for his graffiti in New York City in the late 1970s, under the name "SAMO." Working with a close friend, he tagged subway trains and Manhattan buildings with cryptic aphorisms. In 1977, Basquiat quit high school a year before he was slated to graduate. To make ends meet, he sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork on the streets of his native New York. asquiat lived out a struggle which was all too familiar to him; the racial reality of the United States. Intelligent and able to think for himself, Basquiat was very afraid, and often paranoid, of the trouble he faced as both a black man and a black artist in New York.