E xecuted when Jean-Michel Basquiat was just eighteen years old, Untitled from 1978 is a rare and revelatory early work that foreshadows the explosive visual vocabulary that would come to define his mature career. Rendered in a continuous, trembling line with a ballpoint pen, the drawing captures a distorted, composite head—a subject that would become a cornerstone of Basquiat’s iconography and a key vehicle for his exploration of identity, intellect, race, and inner life.

As one of the earliest known depictions of the head in Basquiat’s oeuvre, Untitled offers a crucial entry point into a motif that would remain central throughout his life. From early notebook drawings to his monumental canvases of the 1980s, the head served as a recurring site of meaning: an index of intellect and agency, a mask, a skull, a battlefield of historical memory. In later works, heads would appear crowned, x-rayed, diagrammed, or flayed—simultaneously heroic and haunted.

The Evolution of the Head in Basquiat’s Oeuvre

Even in its nascent form, the head in Untitled reveals Basquiat’s preternatural command of expressive mark-making and formal improvisation. The figure is both schematic and charged with psychological density: a jagged profile is superimposed with bulging lips, exposed teeth, clenched fists, tubes, and spirals. The lines pulse with nervous energy, coiling and unspooling into an almost anatomical delirium. Spectacles sit askew above a fractured nose, while internal mechanisms—reminiscent of musculature, wiring, or dental work—evoke both the physical and symbolic complexity of the human figure. This is not a likeness but an x-ray of consciousness: unfiltered, restless, and deeply alive.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s skull motif is one of his most iconic and enduring symbols throughout his meteoric rise to cultural and critical acclaim. The symbol of the skull reflects Basquiat’s deep engagement with themes of identity, mortality, and the African diaspora. Often depicted in a raw, almost anatomical style, the skull is not just a memento mori but a complex representation of Black life and struggle. In works like Untitled, Basquiat blends energetic draftsmanship, using the skull to confront the viewer with the realities of death, history, and cultural erasure.

Entirely fresh to the market, this early example by Basquiat has never before appeared at auction, having been directly acquired from the artist the very year it was created. It resided in the same private collection for over twenty years, making this an exceedingly rare and prescient example of Basquiat’s genius.