Academic Study of the Male Figure by Jean-Michel Basquiat is among the rarest prints he made during his lifetime — a screenprint published by New City Editions in 1983 in an edition of twenty, of which Basquiat signed and numbered only thirteen. It belongs to a small group of anatomically themed lifetime prints that sit outside the formal Anatomy portfolio and outside the posthumous estate releases, existing in a category of their own: work Basquiat authorised, numbered, and released into the world before his death.

The image is drawn in brown on warm Okawara paper — a standing male figure annotated with PECHO across the abdomen, INNER HAMSTRINGS to the left, numbers and arrows marking sections of the torso, and NEW RINSO appearing twice at the top alongside the soap brand's characteristic graphic. To the right, a vertebral column and a notation referencing Leonardo. At the base, the title is written twice in Basquiat's hand, as though the act of naming it needed repeating before it would hold.

The relationship to Leonardo is direct — the annotations visible in the work explicitly reference him — but the image sits closer to the Leonardo portfolio in spirit than to the Anatomy series. Where the Anatomy prints isolate individual bones against black grounds with clinical economy, Academic Study of the Male Figure places a whole figure on a warm field and layers it with commercial language and anatomical notation simultaneously. RINSO on a body is the same pairing that Per Capita makes with the crown above ASBESTOS — elevation and contamination, or here, the body and its commodification, sharing the same image without resolution.

For more information or to buy Academic Study of the Male Figure by Jean-Michel Basquiat, contact our specialists using the enquiry button above.