Basel retrospective pays homage to US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat

American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988 of a drug overdose at only 27, once admitted that he did not know how to characterise his phenomenally successful work.

"I never know how really to describe it except maybe - I don't know, I don't know how to describe my work, cause it's not always the same thing," he said.

Indeed the one-time graffiti artist, who went on to collaborate with Andy Warhol, packed his works with a mish-mash of ideas ranging from music to contemporary culture to social commentary about racism and injustice.

To mark his 50th birthday, the biggest retrospective yet of Mr Basquiat's work has opened at the Beyeler Foundation in the northern Swiss city of Basel with more than 100 pieces on show, before moving onto Paris.

Many of the works, drawn from both private and public collections around the world, display Mr Basquiat's signature comic-like figures in bold colours.

"When you get into it, there's so much knowledge inside, a lot of contemporary inside," said the curator of the Basel show, Dieter Buchhart.

Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Mr Basquiat defied his modest beginnings - his father was a Haitian immigrant and his mother was from Puerto Rico - to became part of the avant-garde New York scene of the 1980s, mixing with Warhol and other renowned artists of the day.

At one point he had a brief affair with then rising singer and actress Madonna.

His first passion was street graffiti, using walls in Brooklyn and Manhattan as his workspace, before Mr Basquiat switched to painting at the age of 19.

Friends quickly learned he was not one to spare blank surfaces, at times covering their furniture, even refrigerators, with his drawings.