The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat release of Odours of Punt (1983/2024), published by Flatiron Editions.
The print was available exclusively through Pace Prints starting on May 1 at 11am New York time.
The posthumous release is stamped and signed by Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, the artist’s sisters and administrators of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The title refers to an ancient African kingdom, Punt, known as a producer and exporter of gold and aromatic resins to Egypt, which also connects to text in the work, archetypal in its enigmatic mix of popular culture and historical references.
Odours of Punt, based on an artwork created in 1983, is an outstanding painterly example of the artist’s work incorporating his signature Xerox collage technique with paint and oilstick layering and overpainting.
Equal parts poet and painter, Basquiat challenged the art world binary of high and low, merging European and “primitive” through a neo-expressionist, painterly style that is nearly impossible to categorize. Recent exhibitions include Boom For Real at the Barbican Centre in London (2017; traveled to the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2018), Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2018; traveled to the Brant Foundation in New York in 2019), King Pleasure at the Starrett- Lehigh Building in New York (2022; traveled to the Grand LA in Los Angeles in 2023), Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2022; traveled to the Paris Philharmonic in 2023), and Basquiat. The Modena Paintings at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2023).
