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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings of boxers are among his most personally and politically charged subjects. In the figure of the Black boxer, Basquiat found an alluring icon of self-made power, a hero for the modern era, an athletic champion who manages to triumph in a world where the odds were firmly stacked against him in the form of deep-seated racial prejudices. This was a heroic figure that Basquiat deeply identified with, as a young man possessed of powerful artistic talent, of Haitian and Puerto Rican heritage, going up against the predominantly white world of the art establishment.
As Basquiat famously declared in a 1983 interview, he defined the subject of his art as “Royalty, heroism and the streets” (quoted in H. Geldzahler, “Art: From the Subways to Soho, Jean-Michel Basquiat,” Interview, January 1983). The human figure quickly emerged as the central theme in Basquiat’s work, which he would use as a vehicle for melding autobiography with references to popular culture and Black history.