TAKI 183

TAKI 183 was the first graffiti writer known to the general public. Born Demetrius in New York in 1953, of Greek descent, he took his name from a diminutive of Demetrios and the number of his street, 183rd in Washington Heights.

 Working as a foot messenger in the late 1960s, he wrote it wherever his deliveries took him — subway stations, walls, ice-cream trucks, the entrances of public buildings — across all five boroughs, at a volume that made the name unavoidable long before anyone knew whose it was.

On 21 July 1971 the New York Times published a short article headlined "'Taki 183' Spawns Pen Pals", identifying him and reporting that others had begun imitating him. The piece is generally treated as the moment the practice became conscious of itself. Within two years the number of writers in New York had multiplied beyond counting, style had begun to develop as a form of competition, and the subway system had become the arena in which it happened.His own written form was plain: a marker signature, unembellished, made for speed and repetition.

 He was not a stylist and has never claimed to be. What he demonstrated, and what the article transmitted, was the underlying proposition — that persistence and ubiquity could turn a name into a presence, and that this was available to anyone with a marker and the willingness to use it.

He stopped writing in the mid-1970s, before the form he had triggered developed the elaboration it is now known for, and worked afterwards outside the art world. He has given occasional interviews and released a small number of print editions, but never built an exhibiting career. That absence is part of the record rather than a gap in it. TAKI 183's significance is that the thing started, publicly and traceably, with him.

AT A GLANCE

Born 1953, New York, NY, USA

Active as a writer c. 1969–1973, Washington Heights and across New York City

Identified in the New York Times, 21 July 1971

No exhibition record; the work was made in the street