Jean-Michel Basquiat is one of the best-known artists of his generation and is widely considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His career in art spanned the late 1970s through the 1980s until his death in 1988, at the age of 27.

Basquiat works are edgy and raw, and through a bold sense of color and composition, he maintains a fine balance between seemingly contradictory forces such as control and spontaneity, menace and wit, urban imagery and primitivism. The Basquiat brand embodies the values and aspirations of young,international urban culture. Basquiat often incorporated words into his paintings. Before his career as a painter began, he produced punk-inspired postcards for sale on the street, and become known for the political–poetical graffiti under the name of SAMO.

The conjunction of various media is an integral element of Basquiat’s art. His paintings are typically covered with text and codes of all kinds: words, letters, numerals, pictograms, logos, map symbols, diagrams and more, and featured multi-panel paintings and individual canvases with exposed stretcher bars, the surface dense with writing, collage and imagery. The Swatch love affair with art started in 1985 with the first of a long line of Art Special watches. Always looking for new ways to democratise the art world, Swatch joined forces with the world-famous museums to recreate some of their most powerful artworks as part of a new Museum Journey series. Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (2018) and Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (2018) were the first venues to open their doors to Swatch, swiftly followed by the Musée du Louvre in Paris (2019), MoMA in New York (2021), and Centre Pompidou in Paris (2022). The Swatch x JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT collaboration will drop worldwide on May 11th.

Partnership done in collaboration with Artestar, a global licensing agency and creative consultancy representing high-profile artists, photographers, designers and creatives.

“We love Swatch and are so excited to see this thoughtful curation of artworks translate into such fun and vibrant watch designs. This is one of those classic collaborations which really hits the mark for us.”