Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Leeches, from the Daros Suite, is a visceral and uncompromising exploration of exploitation, dependency, and systemic decay. Dominated by a turbulent blue ground, the composition is crowded with anatomical diagrams, handwritten text, and aggressive blacked-out forms that create an atmosphere of compression and unease.

At the center, a profile head rendered in raw reds and yellows appears partially dissected, its interior exposed like a medical illustration. Tubes, arrows, and notations connect the head to surrounding text and symbols, suggesting extraction and invasion rather than healing. Repeated references to parasites, fleas, boric acid, and dehydration reinforce the metaphor of bodies—both literal and social—being drained of value. Language functions as both explanation and accusation, scrawled urgently and often crossed out, as if censored or contested in real time.

Black voids interrupt the surface, acting as erasures or blind spots that deny clarity and resolution. These voids heighten the sense of imbalance, while symbols of power and currency—charts, circles, and references to “POWER + MONEY (VALUE)”—underscore Basquiat’s critique of economic systems that profit from weakness and dependence. The tension between “FLESH” and “SPIRIT,” recurring across the Daros Suite, situates the work within a broader meditation on what is consumed and what survives.

In Leeches, Basquiat transforms the medical and biological into political metaphor. The screen print preserves the urgency of his hand while clarifying the graphic intensity of the imagery, resulting in a work that is both intellectually ferocious and emotionally charged—a stark indictment of parasitic structures embedded within society. For more information on Jean Michel Basquiat's Leeches for sale, contact our New York and London galleries using the form below.