
A 21-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat traveled to Modena, Italy in the summer of ’81…
He created eight large scale works, The Modena Paintings, as they’re now known, that were sold to collectors and were never shown together. Until now, 40 years later, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, has reunited the all eight in a new exhibit.
Associate curator Iris Hasler was tasked with the challenge of identifying and locating the works in question,
- We said from the beginning that we could only hold the exhibition if we had all eight works.”
And here they are.
Basquiat: The Modena Paintings runs through August 27 at Fondation Beyeler.






(Photos, Mark Niedermann/Fondation Beyeler; via Artsy)