Futura 2000 'MADS' Print Available

Artist: Futura 2000
Title: MADS
Medium: Deckled Lithographic Stone Print
Size: 48 x 55 cm
Edition: 50
Prices: $1,500

 

Leonard Hilton McGurr, known worldwide as Futura 2000, was born in New York City in 1955 and rose from subway tunnels to museum walls. As a teenager he painted rolling steel, but he broke away from letter based graffiti in 1980 by covering an entire subway car with abstract forms and no words, a piece simply titled Break. That act introduced atom shapes, floating orbs and linear bursts that felt like cosmic diagrams, establishing him as the first major abstractionist in street art history. His swift lines, achieved with skinny spray caps, earned comparisons to Kandinsky and gave visual form to the energy of early hip hop. In 1981 he toured with The Clash, painting live backdrops and recording the vinyl manifesto The Escapades of Futura 2000, merging punk rock and aerosol culture.

Gallery shows at Fun Gallery and Tony Shafrazi followed, placing him alongside Basquiat, Haring and Scharf in the vanguard that carried street expression into fine art institutions. Over five decades he has refined his vocabulary while continuing to collaborate across disciplines, designing album sleeves for U.N.K.L.E., customizing Akari lamps for the Noguchi Museum and directing visual campaigns for Virgil Abloh, Nike, BMW and Comme des Garçons. His label Futura Laboratories extends the aesthetic into apparel and objects, proving that the same forms which once animated train cars can inhabit tote bags, sneakers and digital projections. A major retrospective titled Breaking Out is on view at the Bronx Museum through March 2025, tracing an evolution from clandestine metro panels to museum scale installations and testifying to the enduring power of his interstellar mark making.