Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn in 1960 to parents of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Growing up, his mother noticed his interest in creativity and artwork and dedicated a lot of time to taking her children to museums and galleries. As a young man, his expressive, emotive, raw paintings captured the attention of the New York art scene, in particular Andy Warhol who became a friend and muse. Inherently curious, Basquiat's studio was always filled with books, encyclopedias, artifacts and objects of interest—most of which, along with current pop culture references to sportspeople and musicians, would end up as details in his paintings. He died at the age of 27 in 1988.
