Coco144
American Painter
NYC
Roberto Gualtieri, also known as COCO 144, is a master of a generation of writers, artists, and dreamers. One of the first ‘Writers’ of the late 1960s, COCO 144 embossed New York City subway cars, underground tunnels, and concrete walls with his spray-painted pen name—inspired by a popular Puerto Rican pet name and the street that he grew up on in Manhattan, 144th street.
Artist Profile: Coco144
COCO 144
One of the first ‘Writers’ of the late 1960s, COCO 144 embossed New York City subway cars, underground tunnels, and concrete walls with his spray-painted pen name—inspired by a popular Puerto Rican pet name and the street that he grew up on in Manhattan, 144th street. His art lives on, both literally and figuratively, throughout the hollows of New York City.
My Name Was Writ In Water
In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, a generation of children took to the streets, and signed their names to the trains and walls of a crumbling New York City infrastructure. This innovative language dismissed as “graffiti” by the media was illegible to the outsider, and a creative call-to-arms for the initiate, a battle of letters and words Rammellzee dubbed “Iconoclast Panzerism.”