Tats Cru

Last updated
TATS CRU mural in Lodz, Poland Mural of Tats Cru, Lodz 102 Piotrkowska Street yard.jpg
TATS CRU mural in Lodz, Poland

Tats Cru, Inc. is a group of Bronx-based graffiti artists turned professional muralists. [1] The current members of Tats Cru are Bio, BG183,FEVER, Nicer, HOW, and NOSM. Tats Cru were founded by Brim, Bio, BG183 and Nicer.

Contents

Over the last two decades, Tats Cru has produced various advertisements for clients ranging from neighborhood businesses and institutions to large corporations like Coca-Cola and Sony. [2] [3]

Tats Cru is also a major producer of New York City-style memorial murals, and have created artwork for many musicians including Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott, Metallica, Big Pun, Jennifer Lopez, Rick Ross, DJ Kool Herc, Nas and many more.

Tats Cru has a strong bond with rapper Fat Joe and created many of his advertisement billboards for album releases in the 1990s.

Tats Cru heavily paints murals of friend and deceased rapper Big Pun and are solely responsible for the Big Pun memorial wall in the Bronx, New York City.

Artists

Bio

Wilfredo "Bio" Feliciano born April 20, 1966, in New York started his artistic career in the early eighties at the height of the New York City subway graffiti movement. Thirty years later he is considered to be one of the top stylists or letter masters throughout the movement worldwide. Known for his many letter styles, complex and intricate wild styles as well as his explosive use of colors. Bio is known as a true master of New York style painting.

Wilfredo "Bio" Feliciano is also a founding member of the world-famous art collective known as Tats Cru "The Mural Kings" originally known as TAT Cru founded by Brim, Mack and Bio in the eighties. Tats Cru continues to be a major force in the advancement of graffiti art both commercially and artistically. Tats Cru’s current active members are Hector "Nicer" Nazario, Sotero "Bg183" Ortiz, Raoul "How" Perre, Davide "Nosm" Perre and Totem2.

Wilfredo "Bio" Feliciano’s work has been featured in many publications, movies, music videos and documentaries throughout his career. He has also painted in numerous countries over the past 30 years, invited by different organizations. Bio has collaborated with many of the top graffiti artists in the world from past to present day. He has also lectured at M.I.T. and various universities in the United States. Bio was also part of the Smithsonian Institution’s 35th annual Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., where Tats Cru was chosen to represent New York City muralists at the festival.

Wilfredo "Bio" Feliciano continues to work and live in New York City.

Nicer

He was born Hector Nazario in the South Bronx in 1967. He was fortunate enough to be born with creativity running through his veins at an early age. Throughout the 1970s he played in abandoned buildings, transforming them in his mind into magical worlds of wonder and using his surroundings to create trucks and cars of bricks and wood chunks found in abandoned lots in his South Bronx neighborhood.

In the 1980s, as a teenager he was drawn to the colored written graffiti on the New York City Subway trains and walls. He went on to become one of the founding members of The Famous "TAT Crew". It was his first official introduction to the art world.

At the end off the subway painting movement that propelled the TAT crew into subculture stardom, the members split and went their own ways, except for three. NICER and his two childhood painting partners vowed to continue to do what they’d loved, painting.

Forming the firstgGraffiti company of its kind, "Tats Cru, Inc" was born. It was 1996 and Tats Cru had one main goal; to show the world that graffiti is a viable art form.

In the three decades that Nicer has been painting, he has created artwork for many well-known clients like:

HOW and NOSM

Twin brothers Raoul and David Perre, respectively known as HOW and NOSM, are graffiti artists and professional muralists residing in New York. Born in the Basque country of San Sebastian, Spain, the Perre brothers were raised in Düsseldorf, Germany, practicing the Bronx-born art form of graffiti. Their late teenage years were spent spraypainting around the world, visiting more than 60 countries and leaving their remarkably detail oriented artwork on everything from buildings to subway trains. During a visit to New York in 1997, HOW and NOSM were asked to become members of Tats Cru. Shortly thereafter in 1999, they permanently relocated to New York, a move that influenced their transition from tagging and spray painting trains to creating refined large scale murals and paintings on canvas. HOW and NOSM have been featured in several publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker and LA Weekly. Their artwork has stirred the likes of Reverend Al Sharpton with its controversial undertones of radical subjects manifested within their art. As adept with a spray can as only few artists could ever hope to be with a brush, the Perres’ body of work includes everything from canvases and large-scale multimedia sculpture to practically anything they feel compelled to leave their signature on.

While stylized and technical work is often compromised by the use of vibrant colors and flashy effects, How and Nosm have taken an opposite approach. In their most recent work, the brothers have restricted themselves to a sparse color palette of red, black and white. This limitation of color accentuates every line, creating a framework that jumps to the forefront. The drawings maintain the aesthetic of Jacks, Queens and Kings pulled from a deck of playing cards. The meticulous lines and intricate patterns presented in such a minimalist fashion make How and Nosm’s work instantly recognizable and unique.

Totem

Graffiti artist Mister Totem has applied paint to walls for 20 years.

Totem’s well-known style and technique is renowned worldwide, most noted for his signature robotic armored letters, characters, and wild versatility. His strongest points are backgrounds and creating a very complete final mural, not just the average piece by piece graffiti normally seen.

Starting in Atlanta, Georgia, as his home he has traveled and painted across the globe. Spraying countries such as Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, France, and the United Kingdom. His work showcased in galleries from New York and Los Angeles to Japan. His work has also been commissioned by many corporate companies looking to borrow street credibility from his art.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graffiti</span> Drawings and paintings on walls

Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mural</span> Piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a large permanent surface

A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Haring</span> American artist and social activist (1958–1990)

Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his work includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism by using the images to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness. In addition to solo gallery exhibitions, he participated in renowned national and international group shows such as documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial in New York, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. The Whitney Museum held a retrospective of his art in 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Futura (graffiti artist)</span> American graffiti artist

Leonard Hilton McGurr, known as Futura, and formerly known as Futura 2000, is an American graffiti artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Street artist</span>

A street artist is a person who makes art in public places. Street artists include portrait artists, caricaturists, graffiti artists, muralists and people making crafts. Street artists can also refer to street performers such as musicians, acrobats, jugglers, living statues, and street theatre performers. Street artists can be seen throughout the world.

Bio is the tagger name of Wilfredo Feliciano. He started painting graffiti on New York City Subway in 1980, and is one of the founding members of the TATS CRU.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Street art</span> Art that is public and temporary in public spaces

Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cope2</span>

Fernando Carlo is an artist from the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OSGEMEOS</span>

OSGEMEOS are identical twin street artists Otavio Pandolfo and Gustavo Pandolfo. They started painting graffiti in 1987 and their work appears on streets and in galleries across the world.

Michael Christopher Tracy, known as Tracy 168, was an American graffiti artist. He pioneered the art form known as Wildstyle. Tracy 168 came to be known as one of the most influential graffiti and street artists of all time, as variations of Wild Style writing spread around the world. He is acknowledged to have been a seminal figure in the development of street art. Books about 1970s graffiti feature his car-long paintings with their characteristic kinetic script embellished with flames, arrows as well as cartoon characters and the "Tracy face," a grinning shaggy-haired visage in wrap-around shades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Matos</span> American graffiti artist

Crash is a graffiti artist.

Raoul Perre and Davide Perre are twin graffiti artists from New York City. They are both members of the Bronx-based graffiti crew, TATS CRU "The Mural Kings."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graffiti in the United States</span>

Graffiti are writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti, consisting of the defacement of public spaces and buildings, remains a nuisance issue for cities.

Serge Toussaint is an artist and muralist. He was born in Haiti, grew up in Carrefour, Haiti until the age of 12. He moved to Corona, Queens, New York with his father. Here he went to high school and graduated with his high school diploma. He worked in New York for some time working often on his own artwork and earning a wage from jobs such as being a busboy at Sizzler. He and his family took a vacation to Florida one winter and it was during this vacation he decided to stay in Miami and work on his career as an artist. Serge currently resides (2010) in Miami, Florida, and states he is unsure how many signs and murals he has done although it is surely in the hundreds if not the thousands. He claims he was an artist at age 12 and the only lessons in art he had were during his required art class in high school. Serge Toussaint has four children. His mother died in 2009. Serge states that he had a past of doing things wrong, however he states he is now married and spends his time painting and enjoys spending his time doing rara lakay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graffiti in New York City</span> Street arts evolution in NYC

Graffiti in New York City has had a substantial local, national, and international influence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Nobili</span>

Brian Nobili is an American street photographer and videographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Stewart (artist)</span> American artist (1926–2005)

Jack Stewart was an American artist. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, he began private art lessons when he was seven. When he was about nine he went to classes at the High Museum of Art. In his early to mid-teens he apprenticed to the sculptor/painter Steffen Thomas. During WWII he served in Patton's Third Army as a combat infantryman, entering combat in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he earned a BFA degree at Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers and Willem de Kooning. He studied architecture at Columbia University and later earned MA and Ph.D. degrees at New York University. In 1976 Stewart married painter and art administrator Regina Serniak Stewart. His first wife and their son are deceased.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brim Fuentes</span> Graffiti artist

Brim Fuentes, is the founding member of graffiti crew TATS CRU, and was born in the South Bronx, New York City. Brim was fortunate enough to start writing graffiti in one of the most important periods of graffiti history. He began bombing and hitting New York City Subway trains, in the late 1970s, all the way through to the mid-1980s. After the trains were cleaned in 1989 he and the rest of TATS CRU took to the streets and began bombing and creating street art all over the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Freedom Train (graffiti)</span> 1976 graffiti mural

The Freedom Train was a graffiti mural painted on a New York City Subway train of R36s on July 3, 1976. The artwork was intended to commemorate the United States Bicentennial, but it was prevented from being seen in public by the New York City Transit Authority who removed the train from public service. The Freedom Train gained subcultural fame as the first whole train painted in the history of graffiti.

References