Claudio Picasso (CP1)

 

Artist Bio

 

Born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in Miami, Claudio was a young teen when he first fell in love with graffiti art and its bold color schemes and graphic styling, its monumental scale, underground culture and means of social commentary. At age 16, as he began to work with spray paint, he felt the need to branch out from the traditional bright, pastel designs, often-repetitive structure, and constraints as solely a form of word art. After studying sculpture, printmaking, and graphic design in college, Claudio found himself returning to charcoal and spray paint as preferred mediums. Upon graduating with degrees in fine arts and art history, Claudio spent time in a gallery and as a graphic designer before heading back to school, this time to study library science. Receiving his Master’s degree, Claudio worked as a multi-media librarian for over ten years, all the while still painting, living blocks away from Miami’s Wynwood Arts District. He learned to carefully research and select unique imagery for his work, plucking classical works like Etruscan funeral pieces or photos dating back to the Civil War era from Library of Congress archives. The subtle expressions and stoicism, coupled with the soft focus that translates well to spray paint, make them perfect for a limited color palette that he bolsters with abstract stylings and design elements. Often times monochromatic, the works leave greater emphasis to rendering, smooth gradients, shading, and the relationship between foreground and background, positive and negative. His current works strip down color and composition to allow line and shading to dominate work that prominently displays roots in charcoal drawing and graphic design. These pieces have a limited, complementary palette in a style that dances between hyperrealism and abstraction. His artwork incorporates traditional and contemporary influences to create a style that is a blend of graphic and street art, neoclassical and abstract; the subject matter is a mix of ancient sculpture, 19th and early 20th century photography, Miami graffiti and digital design. There is a fun juxtaposition of the permanence of classical Italian marble sculpture balanced with graphic stylings in an ephemeral, contemporary street art setting with a non-traditional, transient medium. Locally, Claudio has completed over 100 murals, while being dubbed “Miami’s most progressive street artist”. His works can be seen throughout Florida and NYC, while his international projects include murals in Japan, England, France, Mexico, Jamaica and Bermuda.