LEGENDARY 80S: Basquiat, Scharf, Haring & Warhol

An immersive journey into the most revolutionary New York arrives in Milan

From March 5 to March 28, 2026, the Milanese spaces of Deodato Arte in Via Nerino 1 will transform into a time machine, transporting visitors to the beating heart of 1980s New York.

With LEGENDARY 80S, the gallery celebrates a decade that rewrote the rules of contemporary art, bringing together four absolute protagonists of that unforgettable era: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and Andy Warhol.

More than a simple exhibition, it is an immersive experience that reactivates the free, provocative, and visionary spirit of a time when art left the galleries to invade the streets, clubs, and alternative spaces, becoming a direct, universal, collective language.

Basquiat: The Urgency of the Mark, Before Fame

The exhibition features three works on paper created by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981 during his stay between Puerto Rico and the island of Culebra, known as the Culebra Suite.

These works belong to a primordial and radical phase of his production, preceding his international acclaim. Here, the psychological tension, gestural energy, and symbolic power that would define his language already emerge forcefully. The mark is urgent, almost feverish; the surface vibrates with words, symbols, and layered references that speak of identity, conflict, and memory.

It is the moment when the artist defines his voice—still free from market dynamics, yet already aware of its revolutionary force.

Kenny Scharf: Pop Culture, Cosmic Energy, and Subversive Irony

Among the protagonists of the exhibition, Kenny Scharf occupies a central space with the imposing Los Niños y las Niñas (2022), a monumental five-meter-long work. Created as a tribute to the honorary doctorate awarded to the artist by the New York Academy of Art during the Tribeca Ball Festival, the piece represents one of the most mature expressions of his research.

Scharf blends pop culture, surrealism, and science-fiction imagery in an overwhelming chromatic explosion. His figures, suspended between cartoons and cosmic visions, build an ironic and vibrant universe capable of speaking both to mass culture and to critical reflections on the present.

The section is further enriched by an important 1984 panel, created during his trip to Italy with Keith Haring on the occasion of the Venice Biennale. A work that testifies to a crucial moment in the arrival of the East Village scene in Europe, intertwining pop-surrealist aesthetics with the political and urban tensions of the time.

Keith Haring: Art, Activism, and Public Space

Present in the exhibition with a unique work created on metal sheet, Keith Haring embodies the perfect fusion of art and activism. His immediate visual language, built through bold lines and iconic figures, was conceived to be understood by everyone.

For Haring, the image was a tool for sharing and social responsibility. From the New York subway to large-scale public installations, his artistic practice consistently aimed to overcome the barriers between institution and street, artist and community.

Andy Warhol: The Visionary Father

A key figure of the exhibition, Andy Warhol represents both the point of origin and the binding force of this extraordinary artistic constellation. Mentor and reference for Basquiat, Haring, and Scharf—the latter the only one still living—Warhol transformed consumer objects into icons, anticipating the media-consumer culture that defines our time.

On display are some of his most celebrated subjects, from the timeless Marilyns to the Ladies series, alongside a collection of invitation cards—precious documents revealing his lucid and prophetic взгляд on the society of spectacle and desire.

With Warhol, art is no longer separate from everyday life: it becomes reproducible, widespread, democratic. It is an image that multiplies, a symbol that imprints itself on collective memory.

A Shared Vision: Art as a Universal Language

Four artists, four different sensibilities, one shared tension: to make art a cultural and political gesture capable of speaking to everyone. In the 1980s, the creative act became a declaration of identity, a stance, a collective energy.

LEGENDARY 80S captures the atmosphere of a decade that redefined the relationship between art and society, street and art system, individual and community. An era in which creativity and life coincided, and in which the image became an instrument of change.

Exhibition Information

March 5 – 28, 2026

Galleria Deodato Arte

Via Nerino 1, Milan

Opening: Thursday, March 5, 6:30 PM

Exhibition realized in collaboration with Eugenio Falcioni and Edoardo Falcioni.

An unmissable appointment to rediscover the energy of an artistic season that continues to speak to the present with the same visionary force as then.