Lee Quiñones - Quinquagenary Art Show at Charlie James Gallery

Lee Quiñones is considered the most influential artist to emerge from the New York subway art movement for his expansive body of work that is ripe with socio-political content and intricate composition. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, and raised on the Lower East Side, Quiñones started painting trains in 1974, then shifted to a studio-based practice.

Quiñones has had numerous solo shows and exhibited internationally, first at Galleria Medusa in Rome, Italy in 1979. In 1980, he 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 the critical “Times Square Show” (1980); “Graffiti Art Success for America at Fashion Moda” (1980); the “New York/New Wave” show at PS1 (1981); 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 PS1, Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, the Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Lisson Gallery, Barbara Farber, Nicole Klagsbrun, Charlie James, and James Fuentes. Quinones’ paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Groninger Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Quiñones starred in Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 film “Wild Style,” which served as a blueprint for the burgeoning hip hop movement. He also appears in Blondie’s “Rapture” video and the film “Downtown 81.” He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.