'I Became the Most-Wanted Graffiti Artist in New York'

"Quiñones often took inspiration from cartoons and comic books, painting dragons or, most famously, Howard the Duck. He and his art collective, the Fabulous Five, used graffiti as a kind of dialogue with the city, parts of which believed their work was, as Mayor Ed Koch put it, 'destroying our lifestyle.'"

"City leadership did not respond in kind. 'If I had my way, I wouldn't put in dogs but wolves,' Koch said in 1980 when asked about how the city would crack down on graffiti artists."

"Quiñones knew he would eventually have to move on from subway art, and throughout the early '80s, he steadily brought more of his work aboveground. He painted murals on walls across handball courts in lower Manhattan, experimenting with shading and depth of field."

"'People were making pilgrimages to those walls,' he recalls. 'I don't even know how that happened.'"

In the 1980s, Lee Quiñones emerged as a notable graffiti artist, known for his work on subway cars. His art, often inspired by cartoons, sparked a dialogue with the city, which faced backlash from city officials. Mayor Ed Koch expressed a desire to crack down on graffiti, leading to measures like barbed-wire fences. Quiñones transitioned to creating murals aboveground, gaining recognition and attracting followers, including influential figures in the hip-hop scene.

Read at Curbed