Basil King (born May 30, 1935) is an American painter and writer, associated with Black Mountain College, where he was a student as a teenager.

[3] From 1960 to 1964 King worked as a studio assistant for Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman in New York City.

[4] Since 1959, he has lived in New York, and since 1968 in Brooklyn, where he paints, writes, and works collaboratively with poets providing art for small press publications.

[8] In 1973, King received his first solo exhibition at the Grand Rapids Art Museum; this was followed in 1974 with "Visions of a Great Rememberer: Basil King and Allen Ginsberg," an exhibition of ballpoint pen drawings on music paper that he did for Allen Ginsberg's "Visions of the Great Rememberer" at the Museum of Art, University of Kansas.

[12] Since the 1980s, King has been featured in fourteen group exhibits focusing on Black Mountain College, including the Edith Bum Center at Bard College, El Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sophia,[13] The Hickory Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.