MIAMI – An entire exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiats all owned by one man leads to the question: “Why Basquiat?”
“Did you walk in this room and smile?” Kenneth C. Griffin responded, motioning to the nine massive Basquiat paintings around us inside the Pérez Art Museum Miami (known as PAMM).
Griffin, founder and CEO of the $68 billion Citadel hedge fund, has lent the nine canvases and a sculpture to PAMM for “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols,” an exhibition that opens to the public on Thursday. All 10 works were purchased by Griffin just over the past few years for a sum he confirmed as approximately $500 million.
It’s a haul that includes the most expensive Basquiat ever sold at auction: Depicting a screaming skull, the untitled painting was bought at Sotheby’s in 2017 for $110.5 million by Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa. Griffin, in turn, bought the painting privately from Maezawa, for what Artnet reported was $200 million. Now, standing in front of it at PAMM, Griffin declined to comment on the price. But he did say Maezawa wouldn’t part with the work easily: “This was a multiyear dance.” And what finally closed the deal? “Probably his just feeling like I bothered him too much,” Griffin quipped.
