European street art pioneer Shoe blends ancient calligraphy with worldwide graffiti style

To a Californian, Gothic lettering in graffiti is a gang thing, but as Shoe explains, “that term 'Gothic' doesn't really mean anything. You can also associate it with newspaper logos or even your 'We the People' declaration. I think the Cholo association has to do with tattoo lettering.” He did his first 'big' Shoe piece in 1982, and hip-hop graffiti arrived in Europe barely before his paint had dried. Shoe would become one of the continent's early pioneers, painting in the wildly influential 'Crime Time Kings' crew with contemporaries Bando, Delta, and Mode 2.

Formal calligraphy entered the mix, and at age 18, Shoe started a lettering company. “Then, at 20, I learned the graphic design trade from the master, Anthon Beeke. Then I started a design agency, sold it and became senior art director at BBDO and later creative director for MTV. Now, that was all very nice but in 2006 it was time for me to use all that experience and go back to the source; my real passion.” In early 2007, Shoe went to New York for a month, hanging out with his old friend Eric Haze, whom he had met in the early 1980s on a graffiti-infused New York vacation.

“I made the first Calligraffiti works in Haze's basement in Williamsburg,” Shoe recalls. Calligraffiti is his combination of traditional calligraphy (“Japanese ancient brush characters, Arabic pictorial scripts, illuminated mediaeval books or swirly quill writing”) and the worldwide graffiti style perfected in New York City. “The fairly new art of graffiti has very old roots," he explains, “and I wanted to look further back into the history of writing. Thus resulting in Calligraffiti: traditional handstyles with a metropolitan attitude.” –Caleb Neelon / Against The Grain