LEE QUIÑONES

LEE QUIÑONES

Lee Quiñones is considered the single most influential artist to emerge from the New York subway art movement. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, and raised in the Lower East Side, Lee started painting trains in 1974, painted over 120 whole subways cars, and then shifted to a studio-based practice. Lee was instrumental in moving street art above the ground when he created the first handball court mural in 1978. He has had numerous solo shows, first at Galleria Medusa in Rome, Italy in 1979. In 1980, Lee had his first New York show at White Columns, ushering in an important era as the medium of spray paint expanded from public spaces to stationary canvas works. His work was included in “Times Square Show” (1980); “Graffiti Art Success for America at Fashion Moda” (1980); the “New York/New Wave” show (1981) at PS1; and, in “Documenta #7” in Kassel, Germany (1983). His drawings and paintings have been shown in recent years at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2005), El Museo del Barrio (2010), the Museum of Modern Art (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (2017), Seoul Museum of Art (2019), the Bronx Museum (2019), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2020) the Gropius Bau (2021) and the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies (2022). He has had solo shows at MoMA PS1, Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Lisson Gallery, Barbara Farber, Nicole Klagsbrun, Charlie James, and James Fuentes. He starred in Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 film, “Wild Style,” a blueprint for the burgeoning hip hop movement. He appears in Blondie’s “Rapture” video and the film “Downtown 81.” Quiñones’ paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Perez Art Museum Miami, Groninger Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

www.leequinones.com

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