Image via Complex Original
Though the legendary Jean-Michel Basquiat is no longer with us, there are many artists who follow in his footsteps, painting in a similar neo-expressionist style. The style was most popular when Basquiat produced art, from the mid-70's to the mid-80's, though it has yet to fade completely from the art landscape.
Neo-expressionism often explores social commentary and individuality using bold colors and violent, emotive lines, as if the artist threw the paint onto the canvas. Undoubtedly, neo-expressionism has also strongly influenced street art (and vice versa), through the use of crude materials and hasty production. If you can't imagine what we're talking about, read on: here are 20 Artists You Might Like If You Like Basquiat.
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Marcelo Gandhi
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Gandhi distills images from real-life in his paintings that range from fragmented collages of painted figures to intricate line drawings. His bold color choices and dramatic color blocking technique give his paintings the intense, chaotic feel of neo-expressionism.
Nathan Pendlebury
Location: United Kingdom
Pendlbury creates surreal landscapes by combining flat shapes and hard edges with softer, more forgiving brushstrokes. Like Basquiat, his work has a childlike, playful feel but uses a softer color palette.
Bel Linquist
Location: New York
Linquist's creative process, which includes songwriting in addition to painting, is fueled by the belief that the brain can be rewired through its own thoughts. Her collage-like words, lines, and images are an extension of this belief, and are an attempt to rewire the viewer.
Cameron Holmes
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Holmes' reductive portraits portray subjects that appear in some way bereft or emotionally distraught. The tactile appearance of the paint on the canvas, the frenetic brush strokes and splatters, and the occasional words he includes all contribute to the angst-ridden aura of the work. One of his more serene paintings is an homage to Jean-Michel Basquiat himself.
Andrea Chisesi
Location: Milan, Italy
Chisesi's haunting paintings take on a hallucinatory quality by superimposing portraits or designs over patterned layers. The scenes appear to take place in a whimsical realm uninhibited by the restraints of reality.
Batya Cavens
Location: Ottowa, Ontario, Canada
Many of Caven's glamorous figures have cats' heads and almond-eyes. Their collage-like appearance gives the impression that the mixed media components just happened to fall together into a brightly-colored composition. The linear faces of Caven's characters and the texturized brush strokes in her paintings appear to be influenced by Basquiat's hurried, improvisational style.
Sebastien Alouf
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Alouf paints in more of a realistic style than most neo-expressionist painters, yet his subjects remain self-consciously abstract. The meticulous attention to detail and shadowing fades from the shoulders downward, dissolving into mere outlines on a plain paper background.
MIKAEL TEO
Location: Singapore
Teo's paintings are intriguing, including thought-provoking titles that point to the symbolism in the simple figures. His series "Word on the Street" features cave-like drawings painted in a black grid on cardboard. The symbolism and simplistic style of these paintings reminds us of Basquiat's work.
Maria Lankina
Location: Miami Beach, Fla.
Lankina produces paintings that appear rapidly rendered, using paint splatters and bright colors. In general she includes more secondary colors, such as lime green and pink, than most neo-expressionist artists who gravitate toward a primary or muted palette. The result is equally bold yet more delicate and feminine.
SO FU
Location: Port-Vendres, France
SO FU describes his work as "urgent painting." His gestural figure paintings certainly appear urgent, as if his brush couldn't keep up with his ideas, similar to many of Basquiat's paintings which we can imagine scrawled on the side of a building. The bright, primary colors in many of SO FU's pieces also add to their intensity.
Mike Ber
Location: Surrey, BC, Canada
Mike Ber composes his figurative portraits from simple shapes and blocks of bold colors. The often crowded composition and his subjects' dramatic expressions heighten the emotional impact of his work.
Julian Schnabel
Location: New York
Schnabel's wide-eyed portraits set on blocky, abstract backgrounds remind us of Basquiat's compositions. Also, both artists enjoy painting on found objects, giving an additional dimension to their work.
Oscar Murillo
Location: London / Colombia
Murillo's childlike paintings include scrawled lines and common words such as "milk" and "pork." Some of his works look as if they could have been the product of a kid in school with a few crayons, yet there is something eerie and sophisticated in their simplicity. His work is well-received and he's making record money for being such a young artist.
Gerard Ellis
Location: New York
Gerard Ellis' haunting collages often put familiar characters and animals into unusual positions or situations, making them appear uncomfortable or just slightly out of place. His cultural commentary runs parallel to the self-awareness and social consciousness present in much of the neo-expressionist tradition.
Alexander Kroll
Location: Los Angeles
The color blocking in Kroll's paintings create depth as if they are highly pixelated photographs. The cut-and-paste, collage-like look of his compositions is similar to Basquiat's intensely colored, abstract backgrounds.
Dona Nelson
Location: New York
Like Basquiat, who often experimented with completing paintings on multiple canvases, Nelson explores the idea of space with her innovative two-sided and stacked paintings. Much of her work displays rich texture, especially the pieces that include string or yarn.
José Parlá
Location: New York
José Parlá's paintings are colorful and mystifying at the same time; the layers often peel away to reveal newsprint beneath. His high contrast, shabby-chic compositions are typical of playful neo-expressionism and create a new language of their own, where Parlá often leaves message for careful viewers to decipher.
Barry John MBE
Location: United Kingdom
Barry John MBE's mischievous paintings are reminiscent of Basquiat's spontaneous, doodle-like work that stems from the tradition of graffiti and street art. Barry John also incorporates words and phrases into many of his paintings.
Word To Mother
Location: London
Basquiat focuses on the intellect in many of his paintings by featuring images of the human head, whether it be faces or skulls. Word to Mother continues this tradition with his cartoon-like yet somber busts painted on wooden backgrounds.
Frank Shifreen
Location: New York
Shifreen's paintings emphasize the contrast of light and dark through color blocking. The bold, symbolic style is representative of quintessential neo-expressionist abstraction.