In order to celebrate thirty-five years supporting and promoting this generation of artists, the Speerstra Gallery invites us to (re)discover the artists that figured in its inaugural exhibition in 1984, whose overwhelming avant-garde and eclectic spirit made a lasting impression.
Thirty-five years after their first exhibition in Monaco, the Speerstra Gallery is renewing its original commitment to defend graffiti art, that gave them a pioneer role as an art gallery, with post-graffiti. The gallery has been sponsoring European and American artists ever since then, especially those that established the aesthetic foundations of this artform until it gained perennial status in the history of art. Immediately aware of the visual and symbolic power inherent to graffiti culture, the Speerstra Gallery brought together a nebula of artists, collectors, patrons and institutional partners in order to extend the outreach and the understanding of this movement. A whole generation of artists was born around Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and was able to fulfil, over the years, a keen interest that became planetary. Today, the first artworks of this movement, those of Dondi White and Rammellzee for instance, compete in record sales in the most prestigious auction houses, and there are multiple retrospective exhibitions of the movement within an institutional framework.
In order to celebrate thirty-five years supporting and promoting this generation of artists, the Speerstra Gallery invites us to (re)discover the artists that figured in its inaugural exhibition in 1984, whose overwhelming avant-garde and eclectic spirit made a lasting impression: A One, Henry Chalfant, Crash, Daze, Dondi White, Futura 2000, Rammellzee, Noc167, Quik and Seen. Subsequent exhibitions saw other pioneer names of post-graffiti join the gallery like Coco144, JonOne, Sharp and Snake1. Reuniting all these artists is a breath-taking achievement, turning heads and filling our eyes with wonder! For the first time in Paris, the original works of these pioneer artists, criticised at the time and now glorified as legends of the post-graffiti movement, are reunited in the gallery that launched their European career. The exhibition displays drawings, canvases and photos and is a unique opportunity to see a key period in the history of graffiti, when the work evolved from walls to canvas.
© Speerstra Gallery
