History of Graffiti Timeline

From 1978 to 1994, the Australian group Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, known as BUGA UP, regularly painted over tobacco, alcohol, and other advertising.

Image source: Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions

After several expensive cars were spray-painted in Singapore in 1993, police arrested Michael P. Fay, a student at the Singapore American School, and charged him with vandalism under Singapore's strict anti-graffiti law.

Under Singapore's 1966 Vandalism Act, Michael P. Fay was sentenced to four months in jail, a S$3,500 fine, and caning. Despite international calls for clemency, the caning took place on May 5, 1994.

IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco in 2001 that used spray-painted peace symbols, hearts, and Tux figures to represent “Peace, Love, and Linux.” IBM paid the two cities a combined US$120,000 in punitive damages and cleanup costs.

Image source: Guerrilla marketing

In 2004, the anti-capitalist art group Space Hijackers created a work addressing the contradiction between Banksy's capitalist elements and his use of political imagery.

In 2005, Sony and its advertising agency launched a graffiti-style campaign in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami to market the PlayStation Portable.

Image source: PlayStation Portable

Since 2005, artists have been allowed to display their work freely along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated graffiti zones.

Image source: Graffiti

Beginning in 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs permitted graffiti on fences surrounding major public construction sites.

Many international artists, including Banksy, left work in Melbourne. In early 2008, a perspex screen was installed to protect a Banksy stencil that had survived since 2003 because local street artists generally avoided painting over it.

Image source: Banksy

In March 2020, Finnish graffiti artist Psyke objected after the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat published a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in a new-car article with his graffiti prominently visible in the background.

The 1979 documentary 80 Blocks from Tiffany's offered a rare view of late-1970s New York and the South Bronx, presenting graffiti and the neighborhood's Puerto Rican community alongside gang members, police, and community leaders.

Photographs from a graffiti documentation project were presented in 1982 in a one-person exhibition titled Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ... at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Image source: Centre Pompidou

In 1983, tags and pieces began appearing on Munich streets. Many were experimental works or references to famous New York sprayers such as Z-Roc, Mitch, and Ray.

Also in 1983, Munich developed a small hip-hop and breakdancing scene. Media attention helped draw more teenagers toward graffiti.

Image source: Hip hop (culture)

The graffiti artist Ray, or Ray X, was among the first people creating graffiti in Munich at this time. He became known for a humorous or satirical dog character often used for social criticism.

Ray placed graffiti in hard-to-reach locations throughout Munich. In 1985, he sprayed an astronaut on a concrete support pylon of the 30-meter-high Großhesseloher bridge south of the city.

In 1988, the first graffiti exhibition subsidized by the city of Munich and organized by the European Graffiti Union took place on Lothringer Street. It included artists such as Darco, Skel, Won, Zeal, and Mitch.

The Pasinger Fabrik cultural center hosted the Graffiti Munich exhibition in 1995. A book titled Graffiti Art 3: Writing in Munich was published with it, helping record the local scene alongside its predecessor, Graffiti Art 2: Southern Germany and Switzerland.

The Kallmann museum in Munich hosted a graffiti exhibition in 1996. It was accompanied by Theory of Style – The Liberation of the Alphabet, a graffiti book written by graffiti artists.

The ISART project began in Munich in 1996, allowing people to create graffiti under the Brudermühl bridge once or twice a year. Its organizers noted that acceptance of graffiti appeared to be growing.

Soly Cisse, a 1996 graduate of Dakar's École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, became an example of an artist drawing on graffiti and translating its visual concepts into paintings and installation work.

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum presented graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached major heights in the early 1980s through artists including Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Image source: Brooklyn Museum

The 2007 film Jisoe offered a glimpse into the life of a Melbourne graffiti writer and showed graffiti in economically struggling areas of the city.

Between March and April 2009, the Grand Palais in Paris exhibited 300 graffiti pieces by 150 artists, reflecting the growing institutional presentation of graffiti.

Exit Through the Gift Shop, released in 2010, was produced by the notorious artist Banksy and became a prominent film about street art and graffiti culture.

Image source: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Graffiti played an important role in the street-art scene of the Middle East and North Africa, particularly after the Arab Spring of 2011 and the Sudanese Revolution of 2018–2019.

Image source: Arab Spring

The Bahnwärter-Kulturstätten culture site opened in 2015 on the grounds of Munich's former Viehhof freight-container station, followed later that year by Bahnwärter Thiel. The project provided studios, rehearsal spaces, open workspaces, and workshops for street and graffiti artists.