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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a new exhibition on Jean-Michel Basquiat is a love letter of sorts — to the artist from a former girlfriend, and to a downtown New York art scene now long gone.

“Basquiat Before Basquiat: East 12th Street, 1979-1980,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, is the first museum show to focus on the work and life of the artist in the brief time he lived with Alexis Adler in a sixth-floor walk-up in the East Village of Manhattan. It was a period that the exhibition posits as a seminal year of multifaceted creative exploration in the artist’s life, before painting took precedence.

“Basquiat’s time with Alexis was an important transitional moment because he was still exploring many creative outlets with equal passion, including playing music, performance, drawing and writing,” said Nora Abrams, the show’s curator.

Ms. Adler, 60, saved more than 100 photos, art objects and ephemera from the era. “Our apartment overflowed with art and love,” she recalled on a wintry New York day, in the homey kitchen of the place they once shared. Among the treasures is a sculpture Basquiat made of the carapace of an old radiator he found on the street. In one of her more personal photos, he practices clarinet on the edge of the bathtub in their 400-square-foot squat.

A version of this article appears in print on February 14, 2017, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Scenes of a Life With Basquiat.

old radiator he found on the street. In one of her more personal photos, he practices clarinet on the edge of the bathtub in their 400-square-foot squat.