Calligraffiti is a combination of calligraphy and graffiti. Calligraphy is the art of writing and can take many forms. Ancient Japanese brush characters, Arabic pictorial script, illuminated mediaeval books and flourish-filled quill writing are all calligraphy. Graffiti is the art of getting your name (tag) up in an urban environment. It was perfected in New York City and is now a worldwide phenomenon. The fairly new art of graffiti and its somewhat rigid rules prompt us to look further back into the history of writing. This is exactly what Niels Shoe Meulman has been doing since his teens, and at the beginning of this century he started combining the two. The result was Calligraffiti – traditional handwriting with a metropolitan attitude.
Niels Shoe Meulman
Niels Meulman (b. 1967) is an internationally known artist, graphic designer, and art director. Meulman began tagging as Shoe in 1979 and became a graffiti legend by the time he was 18. In the eighties he met New York artists like Dondi, Rammellzee, Haze, Quik and Keith Haring. He then…
