Adam Cvijanovic’s meteoric rise in the art world began with his surprise appearance (youngest artist included) in the 1984 Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibition “Emerging Massachusetts Painters”: and continued with a series of splashy sold-out shows in Boston and New York (where the artist recently moved). Add the drama of Cvijanovic being entirely self-taught. and you’ve got Boston’s Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The romance of the wunderkind is paralleled by Cvijanovic’s juxtaposition of rapturous love against a backdrop of urban dissolution. As love transcends the city’s savagery, so the brilliant