B.1955, New York City
FUTURA2000 (born Leonard Hilton McGurr in New York City) is a graffiti pioneer who began painting subways in the late 1970s. In 1980 he painted the iconic whole car titled “Break,” which was recognized for its abstraction, rather than a focus on lettering. This painting established some of the enduring aesthetic motifs and approaches FUTURA2000 would explore over the decades that followed.
FUTURA2000 was among the first graffiti artists to be shown in contemporary art galleries in the early 1980s. His paintings were shown at Patti Astor’s Fun Gallery and Tony Shafrazi, alongside those of his friends Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rammellzee, DONDI, and Kenny Scharf. MoMA PS1 brought the artists together in their landmark 1981 exhibition, “New York / New Wave.”
In this period, FUTURA2000 illustrated the sleeve cover for The Clash’s ‘This is Radio Clash’ seven-inch single. He accompanied The Clash on their Combat Rock tour, spray painting in the background while the band played. He painted as an accompaniment to demonstrations of break dance by the Rock Steady Crew, and concerts by Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bombataa. With the Clash, he recorded the vinyl “The Escapades of Futura 2000,” a manifesto for graffiti.
By the 1990s, as the commercialization of global street culture in the 1990s inspired collaborations with fashion and lifestyle brands, FUTURA2000’s work moved toward a more refined expression of his abstract style. Commissions from brands such as Supreme, A Bathing Ape, Stüssy, and Mo' Wax saw his artwork canonized as an elemental component of cross-genre street aesthetic. He has collaborated with Nike, BMW, Comme des Garçons, Louis Vuitton, and Off-White.
Simultaneously, he has developed his fine art practice. In recent years he created collaborative works with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, and he has exhibited at Kaikai KiKi, Gallery in Tokyo. His work has been shown at The New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands; and Yvon Lambert, Galerie De Noirmont, and the galerie du jour agnès b., all Paris. He was the subject of a 2019 exhibition at Urban Spree Gallery in Berlin; and a large site-specific installation in 2020 at the Palais de Tokyo. This November, Rizzoli International Publications will release FUTURA: The Artist’s Monograph, the most in-depth and comprehensive survey of the artist's life and career. His work is also included in the 2020 exhibition “Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip Hop Generation,” at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.
The artist’s work bears his interest in a futuristic aesthetic. He has long been fascinated by science fiction and the space age. He enrolled in the US Navy in 1974, traveling across the world, and becoming intrigued by the computer and navigational systems. He was an early adopter to sophisticated computer technology and video gaming.
In his paintings we see certain motifs relating to these interests: the Pointman: an alien, robotic-like figure, and a form that has been called an atom-shape, but which is ultimately about perpetual movement.
Other recurrent forms are that of a crane, and a linear mark signifying a “break” or rupture. Perhaps most distinctive is the thin, refined line that FUTURA2000 achieves using spray paint. This is contrasted to the larger mists of color area, and to more gestural brush marks. Many of his paintings were made flat on the floor, and bear the energy of moving around the perimeter of the painting, yet approaching the work with a deliberate elegance.
By leaving large areas of his canvases open, and allowing the forms to float across the surface, FUTURA2000 suggests access to a cosmic space. The paintings become a membrane between the personal and the public, material and universal concerns; and it is this grace which has characterized FUTURA2000’s work throughout.
On his birthday, the artist looks back at his singular journey from graffiti writer to industry game-changer.
The first career retrospective in the United States of the seminal New York City-based artist opened this weekend at UB Art Galleries. The exhibition, FUTURA2000:Breaking Out, spans the vast output of an artist who rose to prominence with aerosol can-propelled graffiti and street painting in the 1970s and ‘80s, evolving into painting on canvas, sculpture, wall murals, and product design and high-end fashion.
University at Buffalo Art Galleries is pleased to present FUTURA2000: Breaking Out, a retrospective of artist FUTURA2000 that will span both University of Buffalo Art Galleries locations; UB Center for the Arts and the UB Anderson Gallery.
Over his career span of five decades, FUTURA has built a reputation and continues to be an unrelenting innovator. He has inspired and influenced multiple generations of creative purists and polymaths while intersecting his enigmatic oeuvre with various disciplines and remains at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. FUTURA2000: Breaking Out is a comprehensive survey featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, studies, collaborations, and archival paraphernalia. The exhibition will also feature new site-specific works. Breaking Out examines one of New York's most-loved artists' essential themes and polyphonic output.
Presented by K11 MUSEA and K11 Art Foundation, City As Studio, China’s first major exhibition of graffiti and street art, will showcase the breadth and depth of the graffiti and street art scene across generations, styles and geographies.
Featuring over 100 works by more than 30 artists, City As Studio traces the global history of graffiti and street art from its emergence in the subway yards and parking lots of 1970s New York to its rise as a worldwide phenomenon. It begins with the movement’s pivotal innovators such as Fab 5 Freddy, FUTURA and Jean-Michel Basquiat who were part of the dialogue and the Downtown art scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and goes on to highlight artists such as Barry McGee, Mister Cartoon and OSGEMEOS, and the groundbreaking styles they created in San Francisco, East Los Angeles and São Paulo. The exhibition also documents the emergence and evolution of artists such as KAWS and AIKO who represent a younger generation of New York street artists.
A pioneer in graffiti, Futura needs little introduction. The artist has blazed a trail in the world of art that is as colourful as the stunning art pieces he has produced throughout his career. Born in the mid-50s in New York, Futura (born Leonard Hilton McGurr), was one of the earlier pioneers of the graffiti movement.
In a body of work that drapes over the edge what was and what will be, Futura2000’s Tarpestries summon up the memory of a grittier (and perhaps more exciting) New York City subway as much as they do your favourite scenes from Dr. Who and Blade Runner. There are than 20 of these upstretched “tapestries” on view, which range from seven to 25 feet, at Eric Firestone’s two locations in East Hampton. The monumental size gives viewers the chance to see Futura2000’s work in its natural form: large scale, enveloping, as if it was once part of the city. The tapestries is juxtaposed with a massive bronze sculpture of “39 Meg", the robotic visitor from another planet that has beamed its way into the artist’s work on more than one occasion.
In the early 1980s, Leonard McGurr's name was often uttered in the same breath as those of his artist friends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Known then as Futura 2000, he was a rising star of New York's graffiti scene, his celebrated subway murals bridging the gap between graphic street art and abstraction. But then, as galleries began merging street art with fine art — an evolution that would propel some of his contemporaries to multi-million-dollar stardom — he grew disillusioned with the establishment. "I got sour," he recalls.
In the decades that followed, he moved beyond walls, canvases and aerosols, finding new mediums for an aesthetic that nods to particle physics and the space age. With two children to support, McGurr shunned exhibitions in favor of graphic design and, later, edgy brand collaborations with the likes of Comme des Garçons and Nike. We meet in the labyrinthine basement of Hong Kong's upscale Landmark mall, where McGurr's "Futuraland" sculptures, mobiles and streetwear are available via a pop-up store that counts Dior and Gucci as neighbors. In the atrium above, his largest work to date — a 20-foot-tall stainless-steel rocket — regularly shoots clouds of smoke over passing shoppers.
A pioneering painter and street artist, Futura has exhibited at institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, collaborated with Louis Vuitton and Supreme, and created album art for The Clash. Now he’s teaching you his signature, kinetic approach to abstract art. Learn how to express yourself and paint with color, dimension, and detail. All you need to create art is an idea and a can of spray paint.
15 video lessons (2h 33m)
“Futura 2000” at Eric Firestone Gallery
Born in New York City in 1955, Futura 2000 (Leonard Hilton McGurr) emerged as one of the pioneering graffiti artists of the 1970s, tagging subway cars and Bowery walls, and showing works alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring at the pivotal 1980 Times Square show. Now, after a career focused on abstract art (still inflected with spray-paint and graffiti-gestures) Futura 2000 is finally getting a long-awaited solo exhibition at Eric Firestone’s ground floor space. The show features more than 20 new paintings inspired by the artist’s fascination with science fiction and natural phenomena.
The artist known as Futura — to close friends, he’s Lenny — estimates that he visited around 17 countries last year. This year looks much different; he’s spent the majority of 2020 at home in New York.
He’s discovered that there’s plenty upside to staying close to home, including “Futura 2020,” his first solo gallery show in New York in 30 years, and the release of his eponymously titled monograph with Rizzoli.
On a recent rainy afternoon, Futura walks into the Eric Firestone Gallery in NoHo with a small cardboard box nestled in the crook of his arm. Inside are six cans of spray paint and a blue 3-D-printed version of his signature, which he’s been using as a reverse stencil to sign work. Despite being grounded by the pandemic, the artist is still busy as ever; he’s in the midst of working on a project with the Noguchi museum, painting lamps for an exclusive exhibition (hence the box of paint).
The week before he turned 65, Futura was contemplating his legacy. Considered one of the progenitors of graffiti art, and one of its most recognizable figures, he was sitting in Eric Firestone Gallery in NoHo, where “Futura 2020,” his first solo exhibition in New York in 30 years, is on view. Across the river, in Queens, his installation at the Noguchi Museum, a suite of hand-painted Akari lanterns, had opened the day before. Futura, who is rangy and was wearing a wool knit cap pulled to just above his eyes and a jacket from his recent collection with Comme des Garçons, was discussing the long arc of his career, one that has taken him from painting in unlit subway tunnels to working for the United States Postal Service to being a frequent presence in the global luxury fashion market.
“My ambition to be successful in a monetary way never interested me,” he said. “I just wanted to support my family, take care of my children” — he has two. “As it turns out, I’m actually doing much better now, so I guess it’s a question of my patience. I stayed even when things weren’t there for me, or I saw other people running past me on the track of life. But here I am.”
It’s important to remember that graffiti was never just one thing. Within a few short years from when scrawled tags first went up on walls and trains, graffiti became marketing, fine art, politics and more. The form evolved rapidly and spread widely, captured in an eternal tug of war between external legitimacy and internal credibility, between the outlaw fringes and solvency.
Admirably, the traveling exhibition “Beyond the Streets” tells both of those stories side by side, and sometimes all at once. Curated by Roger Gastman, it takes up two floors of a huge new development in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Less a narratively driven exhibition than a themed amusement park of all things graffiti and post-graffiti, it embraces the movement’s many tributaries — even ones that seem at odds with one another, via an epically scaled show that takes in historical images and contemporary art, hyper-stylized abstraction and gut-level immediacy, news accounts and ephemera.
Once rebuffed almost everywhere, graffiti is now welcome almost anywhere: other art practices, other media, other philosophical zones. Look at the career of Futura 2000, represented in this show by one of his “Pointman” sculptures and some paintings, but who also has recently collaborated with the Mets, and also with Virgil Abloh (who is himself something of a graffitist). But maybe that’s not so different than the early-to-mid 1980s photos displayed here of storefront gates turned into exuberant murals — graffiti as intrusion, but also embrace.
Futura 2000 just unveiled a new window painting titled Violent Treasure at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France. The sprawling work is part of the Paris institution’s “window-as-canvas” initiative under its longstanding Lasco Project — an edition that started in 2012 dedicated to showcasing underground murals and art pieces by some of the most renowned street artists from around the world.
Curated by Hugo Vitrani, Futura’s latest series of window paintings feature vivid abstract compositions and his signature motifs such as splattered dots and lightning-like lines. The iconic graffiti artist first participated in Palais de Tokyo’s Lasco Project back in 2014. Futura alongside seven creatives, including Vhils and Cleon Peterson, were invited to create works inside the institution. The resulting works saw graffiti covering the white walls of the lower floor of the museum.
Violent Treasure is on view until September 13. Visit Palais de Tokyo’s website to learn more about the Lasco Project.
BMW and Futura 2000 unveiled one of the cars, which will be available on the market this June, at Frieze Los Angeles at Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood on February 13 after giving a talk with Lupe Fiasco and Arty Nelson at Soho Warehouse the night before. Since the car would be available to consumers, the graffiti artist eschewed the loud bright colors of artists, like Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol, who have designed their own BMWs in the past, and opted for a more minimal design, with an interior that features bi-colored, Dakota leather M sports seats in black and ivory white with polar blue contrast stitching.
