John Matos Crash

Crash (John Matos) is a graffiti artist born in the Bronx on October 11, 1961. He is one of the major protagonists of the ?spray can (R)evolution?.

He starts to do graffiti while he is still very young, on the New York trains, before passing to canvas.

He joins the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1983. His works are acquired by the most important collections in the world, from the MoMA in New Yorks to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

The public gets to know him when he co-produces, with Keith Haring, the Peter Stuyvesant advertising campaign. In France, he achieves fame after taking part in the 5/5 Figuration Libre exhibition France-USA at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1984. This exhibition featured the work of artists such as Basquiat, Boisrond, Combas, Keith Harring, Tseng Kwong Chi, Di Rosa... and John Matos Crash.

His style is close to comics, he uses flamboyant colors that remind us of the world of advertising and his works assert themselves as pure producs of the contemporary world. He is following the Pop Art lineage perfectly and raises again the so-called subculture to the status of ?high art?.