Lot 40
  • 40

Dondi White

bidding is closed

Description

  • Dondi White
  • Sans titre
  • Signed and dated 1983 on the reverse
  • Spray paint on canvas
  • 130 by 170 cm, 51 1/4 by 67 in.
  • Executed in 1983.

Provenance

Artcurial - Briest - Le Fur - Poulain - F.Tajan, Paris, February 18, 2008, lot 214
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Catalogue Note

Dondi White (Donald J. White), born 1961 in Brooklyn, New York City, is an iconic graffiti artist who influenced the majority of graffiti artists of today.
He worked with letters including pseudonyms such as BUS 129, Mr. WHITE and PRE. He spent the 1970s in a number of gangs, but his break came when he involved himself in graffiti. By 1978, he formed his own crew, the CIA (Crazy Inside Artists) including artists such as DURO, working on the NYC subway system. White occasionally incorporated the classic wildstyle graffiti art, but developed his own “large block” style of dramatic case lettering. He employed painstaking technique unlike other graffiti artists, where he would write his block letters carefully on sketch books multiple times before rendering them on the actual graffiti surface. His most celebrated work is The Children of the Grave, three whole subway cars in New York, drawn from 1978 – 1980, adapted from the cartoon characters of Vaughn Bode. In the 1980s, Dondi White entered the Soul Artists crew, where he collaborated with other artists, including Keith Haring.
White was exhibited at European museums including the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands and the Musée des Monuments Français in Paris. Later, White moved on to paint collages and create drawings instead.
The artist died of AIDS complications in 1998. He was referred to as “The Style Master General,” setting the graffiti writing norm of his era.