Speedy Graphito
Heureux qui comme Ulysse
2020
Acrylic on canvas
100 × 81 cm
Unique
Location: Villeneuve d'Ascq, France
Arianee token ID
591521378
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About the artwork
In a colorful composition, Speedy Graphito creates a strikingly graphic setting. Playing on the absence of contours, the shapes communicate and seem to melt into one another, blurring our perception of the scene. And yet, the differences in the motifs allow us to distinguish an urban setting in which a character recurring in the artist's work strolls. The fragmentation of motifs allows us to appreciate the different aesthetic universes of Speedy Graphito, navigating between Lichtenstein-style color schemes and Keith Haring-style figures.
Expert opinion
Considered one of the pioneers of French street art, this work allows us to appreciate the plurality of his aesthetic proposals. Borrowing from major figures in the history of art, such as Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Haring, Speedy Graphito succeeds here in appropriating their universes to serve his own artistic identity.
About the artist
Born in 1961, Olivier Rizzo, aka Speedy Graphito, is one of the pioneers of French street art. He lives and works in Paris. He graduated from the Estienne art school in 1983, during which time he produced his first stencils for Groupe X Moulinex and adopted his current pseudonym. His artistic universe is constantly evolving, and he never hesitates to seize and divert images rooted in collective memory. In so doing, he questions the paradigms in force in Western culture, while not omitting to superimpose poetic elements that are dear to him. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Provost Hacker gallery in Lille, the Musée en herbe in Paris in 2021 and the Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban in 2022.
“Modern art is important to me because it was the first movement in which the artist, not working on commission, could express an identity, with his own know-how, subjects and tonalities. And that opened a lot of doors. When I was a kid, I used to copy these artists a lot, to learn the technique, the touch.”
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