This allowed him to apply the paint quickly as he didn’t want to stay too long on the street due to the fear of being caught. Blek le Rat was the first to use pre-stenciled posters and images to create graffiti. He considered rat symbolic of freedom and the spread of the street art movement. His pseudonym Blek le Rat is taking from the cartoon “Blek le Roc” with rat being an anagram for “art”. Xavier Prou began his artistic career in 1981 by painting stencils of rats. Graffiti in New York, USA by Blek le Rat Born: Today he is a well established artist with his paintings housed at permanent collections of museums. Quinones was one of the first artists to move from graffiti to canvas based paintings. He created some of the most admired graffiti pieces at the time but unfortunately much of his finest work is lost forever. Quinones often left poetic messages on his art pieces like “Graffiti is art and if art is a crime, please God, forgive me”. He began painting graffiti on subway trains in 1974 and within a few years attained legendary status in this new field.

George Lee Quinones was one of the innovators of New York’s street-art movement and is considered by many to be the single most influential graffiti artist to emerge from that era. The New York City Subway graffiti movement which took place in the 1970s and 1980s went on to have a massive local, countrywide and international impact on graffiti being recognized as an art form. The Lion’s Den – Famous mural by Lee Quinones Born: Here are the 10 most famous graffiti artists in the world along with pictures of their best known works. Still graffiti is considered vandalism by authorities and many graffiti artists choose anonymity as a way to prevent arrest. Today graffiti art is hugely popular and some of the best known artists in the world are street artists. Cornbread is widely regarded as the father of modern day graffiti.

in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then spread to Europe. The movement spread to New York City and blossomed into the modern graffiti movement, which reached its peak in the U.S. Darryl McCray, known by his tagging name Cornbread, began the to write on the walls in Philadelphia in the late 1960s. While the practice of creating graffiti has existed since ancient times, it come to the forefront as a modern art movement in the second half of the 20th century.

The word graffiti, or its singular form “graffito”, come from the Italian word graffiato which means “scratched”. If you have any information that may assist the Graffiti Task Force detectives in the investigation of any particular tagging or graffiti related incident, you can e-mail the Graffiti Task Force at If you would like to report graffiti for removal, call (877) STOP-TAG or (877) 786-7824.Graffiti are writing or drawings that have been scribbled, scratched or painted illicitly on a wall or other surface, often within public view. The City of Santa Ana also offers a Graffiti Reward Program in the amount of $500 for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. Tagging causes blight in our community resulting in a genuine threat to the quality of life, incalculable economic losses to businesses, and can lead to the general deterioration of the area in which you live or work. The eradication of graffiti is a huge drain on the City’s resources in both cost and manpower. In most cases, the difference between graffiti being art or a crime is permission! Graffiti reward program Tagging is not an art form or about expressing oneself. It is vandalism and the destruction of private and public property. Tagging is any unauthorized marking, etching, scratching, drawing, painting or defacing of any surface of public, private, real or personal property.

Tagger graffiti