Museum Circle members are invited to an intimate exhibition preview and reception celebrating Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols. Enjoy complimentary bites and drinks, watch a live performance by Nu Deco Ensemble, and experience these iconic paintings before the exhibition opens to the public. Discover the layering of meaning behind the recurring symbols that cemented Basquiat’s legacy in art history.
About Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols
Featuring 10 masterworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection, this exhibition is the largest presentation of the artist’s work to date in Florida.
In a brief yet remarkably prolific career, Basquiat emerged as a defining artist of the twentieth century and remains deeply relevant today. Shaped in part by a childhood spent visiting museums in New York City, Basquiat’s work draws on a wide range of references—from world history and Renaissance anatomical studies to broader art-historical traditions. His practice was equally informed by the clubs and vernacular culture of 1980s New York, where he engaged with musicians and artists across the emerging worlds of hip-hop, punk, fashion, and film.
Bringing together the visual vocabulary of the time and his own heritage as the child of a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father, Basquiat borrowed and remixed imagery from comic books, corporate logos, and graffiti. This exhibition explores his expansive artistic vocabulary, in which portraiture merges with coded language and a dynamic pictorial energy driven by color, line, and gesture.
