Lee Quiñones: Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond

The Artist describes it as, 'If you wanted one artist to speak for a whole genre, Lee is your man. If you want a book that treats graffiti as fine art and illustrates it sumptuously, this is it.'

Juxtapoz highlights, 'An inspired outlaw with a meticulous design process and precision painting skills, his voice responded to the social and civil unrest of the era and found expression in painting graffiti, an ancient art form that he and many of his peers had to defend in the larger art world.'

Art Book Review notes, 'What we have here are essentially moments in time, a stop-frame history of fifty years of graffiti, if you like. If you want just one book on the subject, this would be it.'

When 14-year-old Lee embarked on his first spray paint mural in 1974, he carried marker drawings into the New York City subway train yards that served as studies for his 52-ft long rolling murals. Drawings, artefacts, and subway photography illustrate how Lee's emergence served as a catalyst for what is now acknowledged as the street art movement.

Before Lee, graffiti art was accessed by a small audience of young people who coveted style and scale. Images of Lee's trains illustrate how he changed the face of the movement, infusing kinetic elements of futurism in over 120 subway car murals across the transit system. Lee invented the concept of the freestanding urban mural in his iconic 1978 Howard the Duck handball wall.

He introduced spray-paint-based work internationally when he opened his first formal exhibition in Rome, Italy in 1979, alongside Fab 5 Freddy. He influenced peers Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, among others, who are shown viewing Lee's work. Lee and Basquiat were the youngest artists to exhibit at Documenta 7. Lee starred as the semi-autobiographical Zoro in Wild Style, the first feature film about hip hop.

Images show the social commentary and poetry used in his early expressionistic work. Subsequent paintings demonstrate how Lee's practice has shaped a generation of contemporary artists as he further developed his technique. The imagery captures the mood and urgency of 1980s New York and moves from the streets to the intimacy and maturity of Lee's contemporary studio environment.