Art Bites

First exhibition focused on Basquiat's notebooks opens in Miami. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988), a cultural icon, is one of the most original, influential and prolific artists of his generation. Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat was raised in a cross-cultural and multilingual family becoming fluent in Haitian Creole, Spanish and English—languages that resonate within Miami’s cultural landscape. In the early 1980s, he rose quickly from teenage street artist to a celebrity in both the art scene and popular culture. He was a self-taught artist with encyclopedic and multicultural interests, influenced by comics, advertising, children's sketches, Pop art, hip-hop, politics and everyday life. He is best known for combining vibrant colors, abstract gestures and figuration with language, which often appears in his paintings and drawings in at least one of his three spoken languages. Basquiat’s handwritten texts are an integral part of his wor...

Joel Shapiro (born September 27, 1941, New York City, New York) is an American sculptor renowned for his dynamic work composed of simple rectangular shapes.  While serving his Peace Corp time in India, Shapiro saw many Indian art works, and has said that “India gave me the sense of … the possibility of being an artist.” In India “Art was pervasive and integral to the society”, and he has said that "the struggle in my work to find a structure that reflects real psychological states may well use Indian sculpture as a model."  He lives and works in New York City.

Carmen Herrera (born May 31, 1915) is a Cuban-American abstract, minimalist painter. She was born in Havana and has lived in New York City since the mid-1950s. Herrera's abstract works have brought her international recognition late in life. Core to Carmen Herrera’s painting is a drive for formal simplicity and a striking sense of colour: “My quest”, she says, “is for the simplest of pictorial resolutions” (2012).