History

Graffiti was born nearly four decades ago on the mean streets of decaying North American cities. The graffiti name was an alternative identity for adolescents venturing out into those streets, a chosen identity with a symbolic power conjuring up visions of strength, toughness and humor required to survive there.

These artists challenged the industrial power of 600 miles of steel and machinery running like a blood vessel through the city, blasting through the tunnels and thundering along the "el" over miles of rubble where apartment buildings once stood. They proclaimed, "we are here, we will not be ignored." Those years saw the birth of a culture of innocent creation and achievement that brightened the destroyed city, turning deferred-maintenance wrecks into brilliant canvases that put a new face on the concept of public ownership. The innate human impulse to create form and aspire to beauty drove these youths to develop their skills, to become virtuosos of calligraphy and experts at finding attention-grabbing imagery, all contributing to the unforgettable impact of these works of art on the world. The rapid evolution of a kids’ game to a full-blown art form was driven by the competitive pressure of contemporary urban life on adolescent hearts bursting with desire to rise above the miserable roles available to them under the crushing, leveling forces of giant cities. The artists painted kinetic, hyperactive shapes and color combinations that could only have evolved on a moving object, mimicking the chaotic speed and power of the city’s ramshackle subway system.

Graffiti art burst on the scene of New York’s art-world, starving as always for the next big thing. Wrapped in the exotic trappings of a previously unknown culture, graffiti moved off the streets and into the art galleries opening up new possibilities for kids who learned that they could have a career as artists. Meanwhile, the youth in cities around the world took notice and, identifying with the defiant gesture, the vibrant aesthetic rebellion of their oppressed and marginalized peers in North America, took up the spray can to blaze color trails from Sweden to Australia. Graffiti was quickly established as one of the four elements of Hip Hop, and graffiti artists accompanied the DJs, B Boys and MCs on their world tours. The internet has pushed the diffusion of graffiti culture even further.

Artists from diverse countries and cultures now form part of an international scene, contributing to a rich and diverse mix of styles and talents. Alain-Dominique Gallizia has been inspired to put together a representative and authoritative collection of works-of-art produced by the finest artists to have emerged from the graffiti movement. Drawing from a pool of artists who have achieved prominence in the international art scene as well as those whose reputation for skill and excellence has stayed primarily in the underground world of graffiti fame, Alain-Dominique Gallizia has sought to create a comprehensive and unifying picture of the movement by establishing a collection of artworks in his Paris studio. Not content with simply collecting canvases, he has chosen to provide a conceptual framework within which the works are to be created: a work that symbolizes the idea of LOVE.

Alain-Dominique Gallizia’s interest in these works of art is not that of a private collector or art dealer, in that he pledges never to sell or divide the collection. Rather he intends for it to be a historical document of the cultural movement that has arisen out of graffiti. He will make it available as a traveling exhibit to the most important museums in Europe and throughout the world. It will be a significant collection, drawing as it does from a pool of artists that includes several generations of graffiti artists, from old school veterans of the New York subways to the first wave of Europeans inspired by them and to all of the more recent innovators in an ongoing, vital movement. The collection will be a panorama of this international art movement and it will remain open for the duration of Alain-Dominique Gallizia’s lifetime to new works by new talents.

Henry Chalfant, New York City, 2006 Photographer,
author of Subway Art, co-director of Style War