BLADE

BLADE was born Steven Ogburn in the Bronx in 1957 and began painting subway cars in 1972, at fifteen, introduced to the trains by his friend Hondo 1. The name came from the utility knife he carried.

He co-founded the crew TC5 and worked the 2 and 5 lines running from the Bronx to Brooklyn, and has self-reported painting somewhere between 750 and a thousand whole cars a year at his peak — a figure consistent with the extraordinary scale of his subway output and the reputation that earned him the title “King of Kings” within the writing community.

His contribution to the form is structural rather than stylistic. Blade is credited with developing block letters and with introducing three-dimensional lettering to the subway, innovations that were absorbed so completely by later writers that their origin is now easy to overlook. He also pushed the vocabulary outward: characters, painted backgrounds, landscapes behind the letters. The Walking Letters — figures whose bodies are the letters of his name — came out of a dream in 1979 and remain the invention most associated with him.

The work is exuberant rather than aggressive. Colour is bright and unmixed, forms are geometric and interlocking, and compositions often open into something cosmic: constellations, shooting stars, deep space behind the lettering. Where much first-generation graffiti reads as assertion, Blade's reads as invention for its own sake, and the pleasure in it is undisguised.

He began working on canvas in 1981 and stopped painting trains in 1984, moving fully to studio work. His paintings entered the European museum circuit early — New York Graffiti at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and at the Groninger Museum in 1984, and Coming from the Subway at the Groninger in 1992 — and he was included in New York/New Wave at P.S.1 in 1981, the exhibition that first put the subway writers alongside the downtown art scene.

More recently his work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum in 2000, The Bronx Museum of the Arts in 1999, Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2011, City as Canvas at the Museum of the City of New York in 2014, and Art from the Streets at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore in 2018.

ARTIST CV

Born 1957, Bronx, New York, NY, USA

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Education and Training

Self-taught

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2016 Blade: NYC King, Hausammann Gallery, Miami, FL, USA

2015 New York in Gargano: Blade, the King of Graffiti, Marina del Gargano, Manfredonia, Italy

2009 BLADE: King of Graffiti — Photographs, Cards, Drawings, Publications, Pijnenburg Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Selected Group Exhibitions

2021 Nos Fantômes, Ghost Galerie, Paris, France

2019 We Were Here: East Coast x West Coast, Chase Contemporary, New York, NY, USA

2018 Graffiti, Vroom & Varossieau, Helsinki, Finland

2018 ICONS II, Vroom & Varossieau, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2017 NYC Legends: BLADE & TRACY 168, Hausammann Gallery, Miami, FL, USA

2017 Francl Gallery, Cannes, France

2016 Urban Dawn II, Beirut, Lebanon

2015 Long Live the Kings: Blade, Inkie and Shoe, Vroom & Varossieau, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2015 Long Live the Kings: Blade, Inkie and Shoe, Gothenburg, Sweden

2014 Galleria Varsi, Rome, Italy

2014 Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2013 Articks Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2013 Viborg Billboard Festival, Galleri NB, Viborg, Denmark

2012 Graffiti – New York 80’s, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France

2011 Articks Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2011 Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA

2011 Galerie Vlasblom, Bergen, Netherlands

2011 Hall of Fame, Speerstra Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland

2011 Mélange of Street Art Artists, Galerie Helenbeck, Nice, France

2010 Galerie Gismondi, Paris, France

2008 Galerie Gismondi, Paris, France

2008 Galerie Helenbeck, Nice, France

2005 Old School Legends, The Outside Institute, London, United Kingdom

2004 Blade, Cope2, Pistol, Aurora Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2004 Marco Art Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2004 Down Under Tour, Auckland, New Zealand, and Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia

2003 Blade with Seen, Revolt, Chino and Pistol, Marco Art Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2002 Marco Art Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1998 Blade One / Case 2: Return to Burn, Martinez Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1998 The Arrow, Stocktown, Fanclub Festival, Stockholm, Sweden

1997 Wiesbaden Festival, Wiesbaden, Germany

1996 Galerie City, Paris, France

1993 City Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

1992 City Gallery, Milan, Italy

1989 Galerie Yaki Kornblit, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1987 Galerie Thomas, Munich, Germany

1985 Galerie Yaki Kornblit, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1985 Stellweg-Seguy Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1984 Galerie Yaki Kornblit, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1983 Post-Graffiti, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1983 Galerie Yaki Kornblit, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Museum and Institutional Exhibitions

2018 Art from the Streets, ArtScience Museum, Singapore

2018 City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, USA

2017 ALL BIG LETTERS, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA

2016 City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection, Museo della Storia di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

2015 City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection, Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2014 City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection, Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY, USA

2012 Fondation Speerstra, Apples, Switzerland

2011 Art in the Streets, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA

2005 Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY, USA

2000 Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, USA

2000 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA

1999 The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY, USA

1998 Museum der Stadt Ratingen, Ratingen, Germany

1997 Symposium, Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY, USA

1996 Stedelijk Museum Roermond, Roermond, Netherlands

1994 Museum Helmond, Helmond, Netherlands

1992 New York Graffiti Art: Coming from the Subway, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands

1992 Quik / Blade, Museum Helmond, Helmond, Netherlands

1992 Quik / Blade, Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany

1992 Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands

1991 Graffiti Art: Artistes américains et français 1981–1991, Musée national des Monuments français, Paris, France

1989 Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany

1989 Museum Helmond, Helmond, Netherlands

1989 Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany

1988 De Horizon Voorbij, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands

1986 New York Graffiti, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren, Germany

1986 Museum Helmond, Helmond, Netherlands

1985 New York Graffiti, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands

1985 Museum Helmond, Helmond, Netherlands

1984 Graffiti, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands

1984 New York Graffiti, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark

1983 Graffiti, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

1981 New York / New Wave, P.S.1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Long Island City, New York, NY, USA

Biennials, Triennials and Art Fairs

2017 212 Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, FL, USA

2012 Adjust Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, FL, USA

Selected Public and Institutional Collections

Fondation Speerstra, Apples, Switzerland

Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY, USA (Martin Wong Graffiti Collection)