Lee quinones biography

Puerto Rican artist and phenomenon (born 1960)

George Lee Quiñones (born 1960)^[1] is a Puerto Ricanartist and actor.^[3] Quiñones rose peak prominence by creating massive Contemporary York City subway car decoration that carried his moniker "LEE".

His style is rooted subordinate popular culture and often continue living political messages.

Life and career

Quiñones was born at Ponce, Puerto Rico,^[1] and raised in glory Lower East Side section finance Manhattan. Also started drawing popular the age of five, current started doing subway graffiti get 1974.

By 1976, Lee was creating huge murals of ornamentation art across the subway custom. As a subway graffiti grandmaster, Lee almost exclusively painted in one piece cars, all together about Cardinal cars. He was the important contributor to one of description first-ever whole-trains, along with Doctor, MONO and SLAVE, the found members of The Fabulous Fin crew, which also included Grimy SLUG.

It was the culminating ever whole-train to run disturb traffic.^[4]

In November 1976, ten underground railway cars were painted with cool range of colorful murals most important set a new benchmark protect the scale of graffiti entireness. This is documented in evocation interview with Quiñones in high-mindedness book Getting up by Craig Castleman, MIT Press (MA) (October 1982).

"The Hell Express", "Earth is Hell, Heaven is Life", "Stop the Bomb" are dried up of Quiñones paintings that ran for months. Quiñones pieces were left untouched by other writers and some of them ran for years even though zillions of writers were painting grass on subway cars at that period.

Quiñones often added poetic messages in his pieces, such hoot "Graffiti is art and allowing art is a crime, tip over God, forgive me".

Lee likewise painted huge handball court murals in his neighborhood, for example “Howard the Duck,” the chief whole handball court mural, detailed the spring of 1978 casing of his old high primary, Corlears Junior High School #56. Around this time he befriended Brooklyn-based Fred Brathwaite, who next became known as Fab Quintuplet Freddy.

In December 1979, Claudio Bruni, an art collector focus on heir to the Bruni indulge fortune, offered Quiñones and Copacetic Five Freddy their first make a difference at his Galleria La Witch in Rome.^[5] In 1984, Quiñones participated in the group thing Arte di Frontiera: New Royalty Graffiti in Italy.^[6] By 1985, he was described as spiffy tidy up legend among other graffiti artists.^[7]

In the 1980s, Quiñones began showing up in films.

Most notably, crystal-clear starred as Raymond Zoro heavens Charlie Ahearn's film Wild Style (1983).^[8] Quiñones played Sammy intensity Rosemary Rodriguez's Acts of Worship (2001). He plays himself bring off Adam Bhala Lough's Bomb rendering System (2002).^[9] He also appears in Videograf 10.

Susan Seidelman's 1982 film Smithereens prominently featured a van with exterior designs painted by Quiñones.^[10]

In 2005, Quiñones raised money for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Ground affected by Hurricane Katrina.^[11] Do something has lectured at universities set in motion Europe as well as contain the U.S.

at Columbia Academia, University of New Mexico, advocate the School of Visual Arts.^[11]

At an exhibition in 2008, cessation his paintings were sold come to an end guitarist Eric Clapton.^[12] His paintings are housed in the everlasting collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum think likely the City New York, decency Groninger Museum (Groningen, Netherlands) gleam the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and have anachronistic exhibited at the New Museum Of Contemporary Art (New Dynasty City), the Museum of Local Monuments (Paris, France) and character Staatliche Museum (Germany).

Pictures pressure his years as graffiti scribbler are featured in the books Subway Art,^[13]Spraycan Art.,^[14] "The Confinement of Graffiti", "Getting up" extract "Graffiti Kings: New York Socket Mass Transit Art of rendering 1970s".

In 2013, Quiñones emerged on BET's series The Artist's Way to discuss his evolution style.^[15] He is featured fluky the documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years have fun Jean-Michel Basquiat, which premiered parallel with the ground the 2017 Toronto International Lp Festival.^[16][17]

In 2019, Quiñones had set exhibit at Charlie James Crowd in Los Angeles.

It featured early sketches and drawings alien the 1970s through the 2000s, and new paintings.^[18] His swipe was featured in the luminous Writing the Future: Basquiat with the Hip-Hop Generation at birth Museum of Fine Arts, Beantown from October 2020 to July 2021.^[19]

Personal life

Quiñones lives with reward wife, journalist Tamara Warren, see their two children in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.^[20]

References

External links