Owen Dippie paints Basquiat near his former NYC studio

A Jean-Michel Basquiat mural by Owen Dippie now places the artist’s portrait near his former home and studio in Manhattan. According to The New Zealand Herald’s November 2026 report, the New Zealand painter completed the work at Great Jones Street and Bowery and unveiled it the previous month. The newspaper describes the mural as 24 metres in size.

Where is Owen Dippie’s Basquiat mural?

The portrait is on the corner of Great Jones Street and Bowery, a short distance from Basquiat’s former home and studio at No. 57 Great Jones Street. In the account Dippie gave The New Zealand Herald, the site is central to the project. He first visited New York in 2006 and made the street one of his early stops; subsequent visits brought him back again.

The report traces the immediate idea to 2024, when Dippie stood outside the former studio and imagined a larger-than-life portrait on a nearby corner. He contacted Guillaume Bouchez, who occupied the fifth floor, and began a process involving city permits and building preservation. Two years later, the idea had become a completed wall painting.

The location gives the portrait a specific relationship to its subject. Looking at the image alongside the street corner and nearby former studio allows a viewer to understand the tribute through its setting, rather than through the face alone.

Which photograph shaped the portrait?

Dippie used archival material from the estate of Italian photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni. According to The New Zealand Herald, he obtained permission from the estate to use a photograph as the compositional reference. Dippie recalled growing up with a Basquiat book whose cover carried a photograph by Gorgoni.

In the interview, Dippie described the value of seeing less widely circulated images and moments between poses, when a subject appears less guarded. That explanation offers a concrete way to approach the portrait: consider the expression selected as well as the identity represented. An image of a famous artist can still turn on a small decision about which human moment to enlarge.

How was the concrete wall painted?

The mural was painted entirely with spray paint on concrete, The New Zealand Herald reports. Dippie said the project took about a month, with weather, logistics and wall preparation contributing to the timetable. The newspaper describes a practice spanning more than a decade of large-scale work in New Zealand and the United States, including realistic portraits and cultural tributes.

The change of scale is a useful part of the viewing experience. A photograph supplies a reference, while the final portrait is encountered against buildings and a street. One can look first at the overall face and then at the relationship between painted surface and surrounding architecture. This is a way of reading the work, rather than an additional claim about its production.

Why does this tribute matter to Dippie?

The project brings a long-standing artistic influence into a place Dippie has repeatedly visited. The New Zealand Herald reports that a high-school art teacher introduced him to Basquiat’s work. Dippie described Basquiat as an influence on his own path and identified both geography and personal connection as reasons this commission felt special.

For street-art followers, the combination of portrait and address is the key to the story. The image connects the memory of an artist with the route of another painter returning to New York. Recording both the wall and the street corner can preserve that context more clearly than a tightly cropped portrait. The Wallscape map offers a way to explore artworks through their locations; here, location is part of how the tribute can be understood.