Andy Warhol, a shy commercial artist during the 1950's, had made himself a millionaire by creating the Pop Art movement of the early 1960's. His fun and in your face take on the modern world radically altered what the definition of "art" was. He then changed the face of music by mentoring The Velvet Underground who in turn continues to inspire legions of bands around the world. Going into the mid-1970's Warhol had transitioned from being a mere artist into a cultural icon the likes of which the world had never seen.     

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 enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into early hip-hop music culture. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992.

Offered here is an original poster signed by both Warhol and Basquiat. The poster, designed like a boxing fight poster, was created in 1985 for their collective “Paintings” exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi gallery in New York City. The poster is colored yellow with images of the famed artists in individual boxing poses. Warhol signed his name in black marker above his image on the left, while Basquiat signed his name “Jean-Michel” below the printed “BASQUIAT” in red on the bottom right. The top of the poster has printed in red “TONY SHAFRAZI * BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER” and the bottom has printed in black “SEPTEMBER 14 THROUGH OCTOBER 19, 1985 163 MERCER STREET NEW YORK 212 925-8732. This poster has been framed to a dimension of 26 x 20 inches. This item comes with a LOA from JSA for the signatures.

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