BANSKY

Banksy is the pseudonym of an artist known for his urban art (or street art) but also as a painter and film director. Concealing his true identity, Banksy is surrounded by mystery. This artist combines the Warhol techniques and the work in situ to spread his messages, which often mix politics, humor and poetry like Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Miss.Tic, Jef Aerosol or Blek the rat. Banksy's stencils are humorous images, sometimes combined with slogans. The message is generally libertarian, antimilitarist, anti-capitalist or anti-system. His characters are often rats, monkeys, policemen, soldiers, children, famous people or old people.

CRASH

John Matos became Crash in the late 1970's. Crash began his long, respected career in the art world with his first gallery exhibition in 1981. From then on, he fought for graffiti to be recognized as an art by the classical artistic community.


Faithful to bomb painting, fat cap style and vivid colours, Crash employs a radical approach recognized by all communities. His symbol: an eye, which can be found present on most of his canvases.

DI ROSA

Hervé Di Rosa is a contemporary painter born in Sète. He is one of the main craftsmen of the French movement of "free figuration" so called by the artist Ben with Boiron, Blanchard, and Combas. A painting often borrowing from comics, rock and graffiti. He founded in 2000 in Sète the MIAM (International Museum of Modest Arts). It has been the subject of more than 200 exhibitions. His works are present in important public and private collections in Europe, America and Asia.

INVADER

Invader is a French artist trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. He works clandestinely in the urban space, and for this reason keeps his secret identity. His job is to interfere in the streets of cities, on the walls, to affix the recurring figure inspired by the video game Space Invader, mid-ship, half-face, mosaic to emulate the pixels. He is present in many big cities of the world, from Paris to Hong Kong.

He compares his approach to that of a virus that spreads in the system that is the city, that is what constitutes his "invasion".

JONONE

John Andrew Perello, aka JonOne, is an American graffiti artist and painter born in 1963 in New York. He lives and works in Paris since the end of the 1980s. JonOne is first of all a street artist from New York, without any academic training. Then, he invests the space of the canvas, support he now favors for his tags. He presents his paintings at exhibitions like Paris Graffiti, in 1991.

KAWS


Brian Donnelly alias KAWS is an American artist and designer, born in 1974 in Jersey City. Stem from the graffiti scene, all his creations bring back the domain of Pop Art. He uses many references of comic book characters like Michelin, the Simpsons or Mickey, those that allowed him to become world famous. He developed a pictorial style, with his very precise line and flattened colors, by adding a drawing that becomes his signature: the crosses on the eyes.

KLASEN Peter

The German painter, photographer and sculptor Peter Klasen was born in Lübeck in 1935.

The industrial theme deeply marks his work. One finds in Klasen's paintings elements such as pressure gauges, sheet metal from public works equipment, metal locks, truck and railroad tarpaulins, hydraulic hoses. Also present in his paintings are logos, numbers and photos from magazines or posters.

A master of contrasts, he is fascinated by the hostility of the modern city and by representations of the body as a commodity.

The recent encounter between the Estampe and Peter Klasen has brought the New Figuration or Narrative Figuration into the Lacan collection, thus developing its diversity.


MEL RAMOS

Mel Ramos, born 1935 in Sacramento, California, is an American painter part of the pop art movement. He began his artistic studies in California in 1953, and had his first exhibition in the United States at the David Stuart Gallery in 1965, and first European exhibition in 1971. The Oakland Museum in California held his first retrospective exhibition in 1977.

Like Roy Lichtenstein, at the beginning of his career Ramos was inspired by the imagery of American comics, and found himself painting the portaits of Batman or Flash Gordon. He then tackled the theme of the Pin-up, in which figures stand out atop backgrounds accompanied by brand logos. Around the 1970's, he began to remake famous art historical works, such as Edouard Manet’s Olympia or Jacques-Louis David’s Love and Psyche.



ORLINSKI Richard

Born in 1966 in Paris, Richard Orlinski became fully involved in art in 2004. Exploring the different fears around the animal figure, he makes sculptures as frightening as they are bewitching.



SETH

Au milieu des années 1990, alors qu’il suit des études artistiques et travaille dans la publicité, Seth commence à peindre les murs parisiens. Il se spécialise dans la représentation de personnages, souvent de jeunes enfants.

En 2000, fraîchement diplômé de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), il publie avec Gautier Bischoff Kapital, livre sur le graffiti salué par la critique qui devient un best-seller. Les deux auteurs fondent la maison d’édition L’œil d’Horus, dont la collection Wasted Talent présente des monographies d’artistes s’exprimant sur les murs. En 2003, il organise de nombreux voyages où il peut rencontrer différents artistes qui l’inspirent; il en tire un livre, Globe-painter, qui reçoit le prix spécial du jury du festival du carnet de voyage en 2007.

Admirateur des cultures populaires, il collabore à de nombreuses fresques en France mais aussi à l’étranger où il fait preuve de finesse et de subtilité. Utilisant souvent la couleur pour ses œuvres, il est également présentateur et auteur des documentaires.

SHEPARD FAIREY

Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina) is an American artist, serigraph, fresco and illustrator. Coming from the Skateboard scene, he was first introduced to André the Giant Has a Posse stickers, which gave the Obey Giant campaign. His work became world famous during the 2008 US presidential campaign, with the creation of Barack Obama's Hope poster that will become an image-icon of the campaign.

SPEEDY GRAPHITO

Speedy Graphito (Oliver Rizzo of his real name) is a Parisian artist who started painting in the street in the 80s. Since then, the artist has not stopped changing his style, offering us always as singular works and striking. With brightly slashed canvases, Speedy Graphito shares a very personal vision of the world around us. Today, it occupies a key place in the world of Street Art.