The last surviving contemporary of a group that included Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Hambleton is returning to the limelight after a 20 year hiatus from the art scene, with a new exhibition at the Diary in London - his first ever show in the UK. Presented by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, the show will display 38 works, half of which have never previously been exhibited.
Venerably known as the ’godfather of street art’, Hambleton was lining public spaces across America with his works long before the likes of Banksy and Shephard Fairey.
Some of Hambleton’s most thought-provoking works include his ’Image Mass Murder’ series of the late 1970s. For this ’crime scene’ street intervention of sorts, the artist enlisted volunteers to pose as homicide victims in cities across America, outlining their shapes with white chalk, then splashing red paint onto the resulting forms.
Street art aside, Hambleton’s talent is in the way he engages with the viewer. Despite the abstract nature of his energetic brush strokes, the forms they create are startlingly life-like and arresting. Pair this together with the chance to see a comprehensive body of both old and new work from the New York art scene luminary, and you have an undoubtedly intriguing show.
’Shadow Man’, by Richard Hambleton - seen here on a street in New York
Photograph courtesy of Hank O’Neal
