QUICKY

Provenance: Purchased from the present owner directly by the artist, since then privately owned Germany.

The word "Graffiti" comes from the Italian “graffito”, which, translated, means “hatching”, but also “inscription in stone”. On the basis of this meaning, the first graffiti is to be found in the form of wall paintings in ancient Egypt and in every historical period.

As the expression of the attitude of a generation, reacting to their environment and engaging with it, the story of graffiti as art started in 1955 with the death of the jazz saxophonist Charlie Bird Parker. Shortly afterwards, the graffiti "Bird lives!" surfaced in the jazz clubs of New York. In the 1960s we saw the first larger scale graffiti in Philadelphia, and by the end of the 1960s the movement had swamped New York, where it exploded.

Probably the most well-known exponents of Graffiti Art are “the Writings” – and the four works offered here at auction belong to this group. Text forms the basis of the pictorial composition, the pseudonym of the Writer is the motif; and now this script has to be so uniquely presented, that each Writer is recognisable. This is communication within a select group and a contest between individual artists. The group soon discovered the underground trains as a surface in its own right, as a means of disseminating their Writings as quickly and as widely as possible.

In the 1980s, the art market discovered the quality of these fast, expressive works of art, present throughout the city. The artists offered at auction here also exhibit in galleries, and had exhibitions in Europe in the mid 1980s. In order to meet the new needs of the galleries, their works are produced increasingly on canvas.