He is the owner of the Shafrazi Art Gallery in New York City who deals in artwork by artists such as Francis Bacon, Keith Haring, and David LaChapelle.
[3][4] While attending Royal College of Art, Shafrazi visited New York City in 1965, staying in a YMCA that was near Andy Warhol's Factory.
[5] On February 28, 1974, Shafrazi spray-painted Picasso's 1937 painting Guernica, which hung in the Museum of Modern Art, with the words "KILL LIES ALL" in foot-high letters.
Calley, then under house arrest following his conviction, in 1971, for his part in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, had petitioned for habeas corpus; he had initially been sentenced to life imprisonment.
[6] Shafrazi went to about 15 of the top New York dealers at the time — including Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend, Paula Cooper, John Weber, and Irving Blum — and helped assemble a 20th-century art collection on the Shah's behalf within four years.
In 1978, Shafrazi briefly opened his own commercial gallery in a small Tehran shopfront but closed it because of conditions in the country leading up to the 1979 Revolution.
[5] In 1979, he opened his first New York City gallery, and within a few years he had made his reputation handling talents like Donald Baechler and then-hot graffiti artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf.
[12] In 1990, he opened a new 13,000-square-foot gallery at 119 Wooster Street, with an exhibition entitled "American Masters of the 60's" and including Carl Andre, Tom Wesselmann, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol.