
CRASH
Pocket Pinup, 2018

Graffiti Art, Street Art, Urban Art
Born John Matos in 1961, CRASH was raised in the Bronx, New …

Coming of age in the Bronx in the 1960s and ’70s, John “Crash” Matos first picked up a can of spray paint at the age of 13 to cut his teeth as a graffiti artist by “bombing” the subway trains in the New York City rail yards. He has not stopped since. His bold, blocky signature—CRASH—greeted subway riders in the 1970s and ’80s, New York’s economically dire, artistically fertile days. By the 1980s, with the embrace of his work by galleries and at the urging of his friend and contemporary, Keith Haring, Crash was translating his explosive outdoor murals to the canvas’s more contained plane. He remains busy with commissions and collaborations, claiming that his future holds “more work, more painting, more strats, more walls, more lobsters, more steaks…in other words more living to do.”


Graffiti Art, Street Art, Urban Art
Born John Matos in 1961, CRASH was raised in the Bronx, New York. At the age of 13, he began following the older teens from his neighborhood to the train yards and began bombing. Taking the name “CRASH” after he accidentally crashed the computer in his school, his name began …

Coming of age in the Bronx in the 1960s and ’70s, John “Crash” Matos first picked up a can of spray paint at the age of 13 to cut his teeth as a graffiti artist by “bombing” the subway trains in the New York City rail yards. He has not stopped since. His bold, blocky signature—CRASH—greeted subway riders in the 1970s and ’80s, New York’s economically dire, artistically fertile days. By the 1980s, with the embrace of his work by galleries and at the urging of his friend and contemporary, Keith Haring, Crash was translating his explosive outdoor murals to the canvas’s more contained plane. He remains busy with commissions and collaborations, claiming that his future holds “more work, more painting, more strats, more walls, more lobsters, more steaks…in other words more living to do.”