Jean-Michel Basquiat masterpiece to lead Christie’s auction with $30 million estimate

Christie’s has announced that a previously unseen Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, titled “Untitled (Leonardo and His Five Grotesque Heads),” will lead its 21st Century Evening Sale in New York on November 19. The work is estimated to sell “in the region of” $30 million.

The 84-by-84-inch orange canvas marks the painting's first public appearance in over two decades after emerging from a private European collection. The piece draws direct inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s late 15th and early 16th-century ink sketches known as the “grotesque heads.”

Basquiat’s work incorporates the five heads from Leonardo’s satirical drawing, “A Man Tricked by Gypsies,” and adopts its irreverent spirit. The painting features raw expressions such as a simian grimace and a howling mouth, accompanied by the phonetic Spanish misspelling “Muy Fao” (meaning “very ugly”). A pink patch on the canvas includes the words “ALTER EGO,” which Christie’s associates with the artist himself.