KAY ONE
Biography of artist Kay One
Brendan Backmann, better known as KayOne, is an artist born in 1970. A legend of the French street art, he was part of the very first wave of Parisian graffiti.
History of KayOne, icon of street art
A major artist, Brendan "Kay One" Backmann started in the mid-1980s in La Chapelle's legendary wave field. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he held a new position in the ranks of vandalism, integrating the 93 NTM, the most powerful crew of the time, a merger of 93 MC and NTM, including Kea, Swen, Mode 2, and the legendary Bando.
Still in search of the underground avant-garde, he went to London in 1993 invited by Judy Blame, iconoclaste Punk, thus exporting the art of French graffiti. He works alongside important and influential fashion designers of the time, such as Judy Blame or Hardy Blechman, stylist and creator of Maharishi, famous Londonian clothing brand.
They will bring him the search for essentials, which he will apply to his own creative work, while continuing to write on the streets and DJing in Mayfair hype clubs.
2001 will mean an artistic turning point in its productions. Back in Paris, he distorted the letters and deconstructed the elements of graffiti towards a form of abstraction....
In a Talent and definitely rooted in history, Kay will be asked on numerous occasions to write in the specialized press (for magazines such as Franck 151, The Source, Tracklist or Spray, on the foundations and legends of graffiti culture.) and to present her work in numerous events including the exhibition " Tag au Grand Palais" (2009) but also alongside another renowned artist: Sharp, for joint exhibitions in 1997 and 1998. He will push the nail of his dedication by co-organizing in 2009 the "D-Day" with the Dogs of La Casse and the 93 MC, which will remain engraved as being the most interesting of the 2000s. In his workshop, he develops the application of his graphic design to the design of objects and various development paths on the walls...
He also attaches great importance to the influence of color psychology on human activity, which he continually inspires in his work.
Working in a workshop does not prevent it from continuing to invest the street that continues to fascinate it as it has always done. Its appeal for murals accessible to the public is always a real quest, a search for places within the framework of a "re-humanization" of this soulless urban space, with a single objective: the beautification of our environment.
Buy a work by Kay One
Our art gallery in Metz offers you the latest works of Kay one. We have some original drawings of B Boy made recently by Kay One, a true memory of this Parisian Old School, which emerged around 1975 in the vague field of La Chapelle, when Hip-hop and graffiti were the artistic expression of this generation.