Dan Witz

New York / USA

Born in Chicago in 1957, realist painter Dan Witz can be considered a heavyweight and one of the pioneers of the street art movement. Living and working in New York, since 1978 he’s gone on to develop a career in both street art and gallery painting. Apart from his street art he is internationally recognized for his ultra realistic series of paintings called ‘Mosh Pit’, showing people in war-like motion. Dan Witz’s work can be found on his collaboration with URBAN NATION on Project M/6 in 2014. […]

Biography / Dan Witz

Born in Chicago in 1957, realist painter Dan Witz can be considered a heavyweight and one of the pioneers of the street art movement. Living and working in New York, since 1978 he’s gone on to develop a career in both street art and gallery painting. Apart from his street art he is internationally recognized for his ultra realistic series of paintings called ‘Mosh Pit’, showing people in war-like motion. Dan Witz’s work can be found on his collaboration with URBAN NATION on Project M/6 in 2014. Witz is taking part in the exhibition “Love Letters to the City”, 2024-2027.

Among Witz’s most renown artworks are his small trompe-l’oeil works such as his 75 pieces strong silkscreen series called ‘hoodies’. These wheat pasted artworks came to live during the summer of 1994 and popped up all over New Yorks Lower East Side neighbourhood. The faceless figures were an analogy to dismal times of crime and drugs that were haunting the area at the time. Having perfected his painting techniques, Witz, who attended Rode Island School of Design and holds a degree from Cooper Union, often uses light and shadow in his works to create atmospheric sceneries, as he did for the series ‘Nightscapes’.

Portrait: Pierre Crosby

Gallery images: Courtesy of the artist

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