Blade

Art Brokerage: Blade American Artist: b. 1957. Blade (born Steven Ogburn), is an artist known for his outdoor graffiti and role in the New York City street art movement. Using a mix of spray paint and paint markers, Blade often creates images focused around his moniker "BLADE" depicted in bubble letter fonts with strikingly bright colors, alongside backgrounds with abstract designs or city skylines. Instead of directly engaging with political narratives like many of his street art peers, Blade focuses on the personal through prominent use of his name, whether realized on a canvas or an entire subway car. In 1971, Blade began his artistic practice by writing his name on the inside of buses and on the exterior of post office trucks with small markers. Quickly moving to large-scale surfaces, Blade painted more than 5,000 trains throughout New York City between 1972 and 1984, rising to prominence among active street artists, and earning the nickname the King of Graffiti. He took his art inside and began working on canvas in 1981, mounting his first gallery show in Amsterdam in 1982. In 1981, he took part in the contemporary exhibition New York / New Wave at P.S.1, Insti­tute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc. (now MoMA PS1) alongside other artists from his generation such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His work has been included in notable group exhibitions such as Art In The Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2011 and Graffiti at the Helsinki Art Museum in 2018. Listings wanted.