Jean-Michel Basquiat was an influential American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote public epigrams in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 1970s.
By the 1980s, his paintings, which were part of the neo-expressionist movement, were being shown in art galleries and museums around the world. A particular focus of Basquiat's art was the concept of "suggestive dichotomies", exploring the contrasts including wealth/poverty and in-group/out-group. He co-opted and fused various art forms such as poetry, painting, drawing, tying them to history, social commentary, and abstractions.
He died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at the age of 27 in 1988. In 1992, The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his work. In 2017, a 1982 painting by Basquiat set a record for an American artist at auction, selling for $110.5 million.
Basquiat never openly identified as bisexual, however many close to him, including his ex-partner and lifelong friend, Suzanne Mallouk, have spoken about the fact that Basquiat was bi.[1][2]