JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT: Il campo vicino l’altra strada. 23 ottobre - 20 novembre 1982.

Roma, 1982.. (4)pp. (single sheet of tan wove card stock, imprinted in red letterpress). Lrg. 8vo. Self-wraps. The very first catalogue, and the first monograph, published on the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, with a densely written text by Mario Diacono. The exhibition was devoted to the display of a single major painting, Il campo vicino laltra strada (The Field Next to the Other Road). Mario Diacono has previously noted that this painting has often been incorrectly dated 1981, and also as being painted and exhibited that year in Modena at the Galleria Emilio Mazzoli, in the show titled SAMO. The work was indeed painted in Modena by the 21-year-old Basquiat, but in May of 1982. It was one of eight new works that Basquiat produced in a Modena warehouse at the invitation of Emilio Mazzoli for a solo exhibition at the Galleria Mazzoli that never actually took place. By an agreement between Basquiat's primary dealer at the time, Annina Nosei, and the Galleria Diacono, the work was then exhibited by Diacono in Rome, in October 1982. Its price was set at 7 million lire, or about $5,000. In May 2015, the painting was sold at Christies for $37,125,000. "The Field Next to the Other Road" was reunited with the other seven paintings that were to be in the 1982 Mazzoli exhibition, and all were shown together for the first time in an exhibition held at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, June-August 2023. A very fine copy. Extremely rare. (Inventory #: B139664-6)