Toxic (graffiti artist) facts for kids
Torrick Ablack, known as Toxic, is an American artist. He became famous in the early 1980s as part of the exciting graffiti art movement in New York City. Toxic started by creating art on the streets and later moved his amazing paintings into art galleries and museums around the world.
Life and Career
Early Life and Art
Torrick Ablack was born in the Bronx, New York, on January 16, 1965. His mother was from Puerto Rico, and his father's family came from Trinidad. When he was young, people called him "Toxic Battery." This nickname became his graffiti tag, which is like an artist's signature in graffiti.
Toxic began painting graffiti when he was 13 years old. He worked with other artists named A-One and Kool Koor. They joined a graffiti group called Tag Master Killers, led by Rammellzee. Another artist, Delta2, was also part of this group. Each artist in the group created their own special way of drawing letters. This was based on Rammellzee's idea called Gothic Futurism. This idea suggested that graffiti letters could be used to express ideas and reclaim language.
In the early 1980s, Toxic and his friends were among the graffiti artists who brought their unique art and music from the Bronx and Queens to the art scene in downtown New York. In 1982, Toxic, A-One, and Kool Koor showed their work together. This was at an art show called Camouflaged Panzerism at Fashion Moda in the South Bronx.
The Hollywood Africans
Toxic met the famous artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. Basquiat became a mentor to Toxic and sometimes hired him to help in his art studio. In 1983, Toxic and Rammellzee went with Basquiat to Los Angeles. Basquiat was getting ready for an art show there.
While in Los Angeles, they noticed how movies often showed African Americans in old-fashioned or unfair ways, especially during the Golden Age of Hollywood. To respond to this, they called themselves the "Hollywood Africans." This was a way to make a social and political statement against the common stereotypes of African Americans in Hollywood movies. Basquiat painted two famous artworks that show the three friends: Hollywood Africans in front of the Chinese Theater with Footprints of Movie Stars (1983) and Hollywood Africans (1983).
Artistic Style and Exhibitions
Toxic continued to use his graffiti spraying techniques, but he started painting on canvases instead of subway cars. His art became more abstract, meaning it focused on shapes, colors, and forms rather than clear pictures.
In 1984, Toxic's art was shown in Italy at a group exhibition called Arte di Frontiera: New York Graffiti. In 2014, he was part of the Rapid Enamel exhibit at the University of Chicago. This was one of the first times graffiti art was shown in a major American institution.
Toxic's artwork is now part of the collections of important museums. These include the Brooklyn Museum, the Groninger Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York. In 2013, he was featured in an exhibit in London called Last of the Hollywood Africans: Toxic, Rammellzee and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2015, he was part of the Le Pressionnisme group exhibit at Pinacothèque de Paris. That same year, he participated in the Graffiti, New York meets the Dam exhibit at the Amsterdam Museum. In 2020, his painting, Ransom Note: CEE (1984), was included in the Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Toxic has also worked with the French textile company Pierre Frey. He designed wallpaper, printed fabric, and a wall panel for them.
Today, Toxic lives in France. He divides his time between Paris, Florence, and New York.
