Inside the Unprecedented Basquiat Show at Fondation Beyeler

In the summer of 1982, a 21-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat traveled to Modena, Italy, and created eight vast paintings for a show that never came to be.

“The Modena Paintings,” as they are now known, were sold to private collectors scattered across the globe, and were never shown together—until now. Some 40 years later, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, has reunited the original eight in a dazzling new exhibition that digs into this critical, little-known chapter in the legendary artist’s career.

“Basquiat: The Modena Paintings,” which opened this week and runs through August 27th, traces its roots back to 2010, when the Beyeler mounted a Basquiat retrospective. The major exhibition included three of the Modena paintings, and as museum director Sam Keller learned the story of the unrealized exhibition, he came up with the idea to finally bring the canvases together under one roof. Fast forward to a year ago, when associate curator Iris Hasler was tasked with the challenge of identifying, locating, and securing the works in question. “We said from the beginning that we could only hold the exhibition if we had all eight works,” Hasler told Artsy.

Her work involved not just unearthing the current locations of the paintings, but determining precisely which paintings were made in Modena, how many of them there were, gaining the cooperation of the current owners—all of whom were eager to give it—and piecing together the narrative around how the paintings came about, and how the proposed show fell apart.

In 1981, Basquiat was just starting to catch the attention of art world tastemakers—specifically, art dealers Bruno Bischofberger of Zürich, Annina Nosei of New York, and Emilio Mazzoli of Modena. The trio witnessed a major moment in the young New York–based artist’s career: the wall of 23 paintings he presented in the group exhibition “New York / New Wave” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. That same year, Mazzoli mounted a solo show featuring Basquiat’s works, under his graffiti tag “SAMO,” at Galleria d’arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena in May.

A few months later, in November, Nosei became Basquiat’s first dealer; she put on his first solo show under his real name at her New York gallery the following March, and facilitated another solo show in April, at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. She also provided the artist with the studio spaces and funds needed to keep his practice going.

In the summer of 1982, Mazzoli planned another Basquiat show, this time featuring works that were to be made in Modena (the prior show’s works were made in New York). He invited Basquiat to Modena and set him up in a warehouse that he rented for his artists to visit and work in. The Italian painter Mario Schifano was known to work there often, though he was not present there during Basquiat’s stay; it was Schifano’s large-scale canvases, prepped and stretched but not yet painted, that Basquiat selected for his new works. The size of the canvases—each one slightly different dimensions, though hovering around four to five meters (around 13 to 16 feet) wide and more than two meters (six and a half feet) high—marked a leap in scale for the artist.

Basquiat, however, wasn’t exactly happy to be in this situation. In a 1985 New York Times Magazine piece, he recalled that he was tasked with making all eight works in one week. “That was one of the things I didn’t like,” he told interviewer Cathleen McGuigan. “I made them in this big warehouse there.…It was like a factory, a sick factory. I hated it. I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” The recollections of Mazzoli, Nosei, and Bischofsberger (who are all still living and contributed their insights to the Beyeler’s research) suggest that the time spent making the works was more like 10 days to two weeks—still, undeniably, a grueling feat.

Ultimately, the show’s demise was due to a disagreement among Mazzoli and Nosei. Mazzoli felt he alone was due the credit and profits for coming up with the show and funding it, while Nosei, as the artist’s primary dealer, felt she was owed a cut. It wasn’t just about the money—it was also about being associated with the soon-to-be-famous artist and choosing which collectors should be offered the works. So, in the end, the show was canceled and Mazzoli sold the works to Nosei, who then sold them to the clients of her choosing. Bischofsberger (who became Basquiat’s primary dealer later that year and up until his death) bought four; and the rest went to four other collectors.

The works that Bischofsberger owned have since changed hands, and currently each painting comes from a different private collection, spread across the United States, Switzerland, and Asia. “A few didn’t know that they owned a Modena, so it was surprising for them,” Hasler explained. “Only a few people knew that this exhibition should have happened, so it’s understandable; the exhibition isn’t mentioned in most chronologies of Basquiat’s life. Others did know, however, and they were all in favor of our idea.” Unsurprisingly, the owners were happy to loan out their paintings to the unprecedented exhibition.

Most of the owners chose to remain anonymous, though two collectors are credited alongside their works: the Nahmads, who own The Guilt of Gold Teeth; and Aby Rosen, who owns Untitled (Cowparts).

“Some paintings are quite well known, like Untitled (Devil), which was sold at auction a year ago,” Hasler explained, nodding to the memorable, red-hued canvas with a giant devil head and Pollock-esque drips that made headlines in 2022, when Yusaku Maezawa put it up for sale at Phillips and it fetched $85 million at auction. Meanwhile, Untitled (Cowparts) “has been in a private collection for 20 years and hadn’t yet been part of an exhibition,” Hasler added.

In addition to Untitled (Devil), two other works will be familiar to art market observers: Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, an effervescent canvas of mint green, peach, bold red, and sunny yellow, depicting a boy splashing in the water of an open fire hydrant, which was reported in 2020 to be sold to hedge fund manager Ken Griffin for over $100 million; it was previously owned by Peter Brant. And the aforementioned The Guilt of Gold Teeth, showing a stocky man in a black top hat before fields of peach and sky blue, sold for $40 million in November 2021 at Christie’s.

What’s particularly striking about these works—aside from the arresting size—is the luminous palette and gestural swathes of paint. “In general, it’s a series that is very painterly,” Hasler noted. “[The Guilt of Gold Teeth] has a lot of scribbled numbers and words, but the other works don’t have that much of his writing, which everybody associates with Basquiat. The focus on painterly gestures may be due to the size of the canvas. The backgrounds of nearly all these works look like Abstract Expressionist paintings.”