JonOne American, b. 1963
About this work: This piece belongs to a series of fifty drawings by the artist JonOne, which he produced in Shanghai for a solo exhibition. All of them are unique and made from Indian ink and acrylic. The artist first applied the black outline, recalling his usual gesture while paying homage to Chinese calligraphy, before enhancing the whole with a few notes of colour.
About the artist : Of Dominican origin, John Andrew Parello alias JonOne was born in New York in 1963. As a child of Harlem, he began bombing the trains and walls of his neighbourhood at the age of seventeen. Quickly and in a totally self-taught way, he moved from the urban medium to the canvas by creating paintings influenced by his own life: hip hop, the street and the underground, reproducing the vision of a graffitied train and its drips. JonOne's practice is characterised by "freestyle", a watchword that imposes no limits, making each of his paintings the result of an abstract improvisation. His first solo exhibition, entitled "Graffitism", took place in 1990 at Galerie Gleditsch 45 in Berlin, Germany. This was followed by group and solo exhibitions all over the world (Tokyo, Monaco, Paris, Geneva, New York, Hong Kong, Brussels, etc.), making JonOne a major artist on the contemporary urban scene.
Expert's Opinion: This drawing is representative of the artist's practice. We can see his speed of execution and the singular movement that he infuses into each of his compositions.