The Boxer

A raw, totemic figure throws up its arms in triumph, the body built from slashing black strokes and a blaze of color, suggesting a victorious boxer mid-celebration. Jean-Michel Basquiat, himself fascinated by Black athletes and musicians as heroes and as figures of struggle, charges the Boxer with energy, defiance, and vulnerability at once. Now in a private collection, it is among his most powerful single figures - the fighter as champion and as symbol of the Black body's strength and exposure, painted in the urgent, graffiti-born Neo-Expressionist style that made him a meteoric star.