In the latest auction headline from Sotheby’s, a painting titled Crowns (Peso Neto) - created by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981 and from his first solo show - is expected to fetch between $35 m and $40 m cites The Art Newspaper. This affords us a sharp moment to pause and reflect on Basquiat’s early years - the crucible in which the legend was forged - and what that means for collectors who look not just at the finished trophy work, but at the generative moments of his career.
Basquiat was born in Brooklyn on 22 December 1960 to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, steeped from childhood in a rich and plural cultural milieu. His mother encouraged his drawing from an early age - he had a childhood photo with a crayon in hand, sketching inside the family home, often encouraged to experiment with line and colour. The young Basquiat was not simply a precocious child; he absorbed the languages, textures and tensions of New York City in the 1970s. Many of his formative impulses sprang from what happens outside the formal school system — from graffiti tags to club culture, from music to the city’s margins. By his late teens, he had dropped out of high school and begun to live in the interstices of Manhattan’s underground art scene. What you see in a painting like Crowns (Peso Neto) is not simply the finished surface but the energy of a young artist in flight - grappling, experimenting, drawing on every available surface, absorbing graffiti, jazz, street signage, the tremors of culture in motion.
The tag “SAMO” became synonymous with Basquiat’s street‐writing collaborations (with Al Diaz) in downtown Manhattan - an early articulation of the artist’s appetite for anonymity, provocation and text. His graffiti inscriptions - abrupt, witty, mysterious - were public, ephemeral, and raw. But they also signalled something much richer: a drawing impulse free from gallery walls, a voice that would eventually carry into the highest echelons of contemporary art. In 1980, he participated in the seminal multi-artist exhibition The Times Square Show. His emergence from the street into the gallery was sudden and electric. By 1981, at the age of 20, he had his first painting sale (to Debbie Harry) and was being invited into gallery spaces.
1981 presents itself as a pivot point. It was the year when Basquiat left the street behind and carried its philosophy forward. Crowns (Peso Neto), the lot now coming to auction, originates from exactly this moment: made in the basement studio of his dealer, executed in the conditions of near-anonymity, yet destined for serious institutional and market attention as reported in The Art Newspaper.
What makes this phase so compelling for discerning collectors is the duality of context: you have the freshness of a young voice, the immediacy of invention, and a mark before the full market moment had crystallised. From a collecting perspective, works from this juncture often hold both historical interest (the “first solo show” provenance) and a raw energy that is less polished, more resolute. One of Basquiat’s most recognisable signatures, the three-pointed crown, appears in Crowns (Peso Neto). In his early years, this motif functioned as an emblem: of kingship, of rebellion, of identity. It elevated the unnamed, the marginal, the street artist into a realm of significance. For early-career Basquiat works, motifs like the crown, skulls, text fragments, anatomy references all converge. They are laden, not fully explained, open to reinvention. The early Basquiat offers more than surface appeal; it invites an engagement with the moment of becoming.
When an artist of Basquiat’s stature is changing trajectories so rapidly, the works from this “in-between” zone – neither purely street tag nor fully commodified gallery product – hold a unique cachet. They show an artist on the cusp: aware of the world, embracing medium, exploring identity, grappling with culture. The auction of Crowns (Peso Neto) reminds us that the provenance of an early show is not just marketing - it’s time-based meaning. For collectors who prioritise narrative and insight, early works offer something sometimes less present in later periods: the unfiltered voice, the sense of risk, the sense of discovery.
That Basquiat’s early work is commanding headline-prices is not incidental. Sotheby’s expects $35–40 m for this 1981 piece as reported in The Art Newspaper. Early works with strong provenance (first solo show, unseen at auction) become milestones in their own right.
His early years - from Brooklyn child doodler, to street poet under SAMO, to emergent gallery presence - formed the bedrock of his legacy. Works like Crowns (Peso Neto) encapsulate that transition, offering something that is at once historical and immediate. In the words of Basquiat himself, painted at age 21: “I had some money; I made the best paintings ever.” For the collector who values the story behind the stroke, the provenance behind the canvas, and the moment before the myth, these early-career works are among the most compelling. For Basquiat’s early years were not just prelude - they were the foundation.
