More than four decades after Jean-Michel Basquiat and his gallerists canceled a contentious exhibition in Italy featuring eight newly commissioned paintings, a new exhibition is reuniting all of the works for the first time.
“Basquiat: The Modena Paintings,” which will open next month at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, includes “The Guilt of Gold Teeth,” which sold for $40 million at Christie’s in 2021.
Each of the large-scale works are now held in eight separate private collections in the US, Asia and Switzerland.
In a 1985 interview with the New York Times, Basquiat outlined how much he disliked the Modena experience. “They set it up for me so I’d have to make eight paintings in a week,” he said. Meanwhile, working in the provided warehouse premises felt to him “like a factory, a sick factory,” he added. “I hated it.” The works found new buyers via Basquiat’s New York dealer at the time, Annina Nosei.
The “Modena Paintings” share several motifs and stylistic features, according to a Fondation Beyeler statement, including “a monumental, often black figure set against a background of broad, gestural and expressive brushstrokes… the human and the animal body take center stage.”
Sam Keller, the director of the Fondation Beyeler, told The Art Newspaper: “With every next generation, the importance of Basquiat’s work is increasing further. His combination of images and words referring to high and popular culture, history, science, social and economic injustice was truly ahead of his time and more relevant today than ever. The Modena paintings were created over 40 years ago and have never been shown together before. It’s going to be exciting to finally reunite them.”
The average insurance value of each of these works is $100 million with the group of eight works totaling $800 million, according to the Fondation Beyeler.
