In 2009, the art dealer, Andy Valmorbida, along with his business partner, Vladmir Restoin-Roitfeld, tracked down the reclusive artist, and the pair both encouraged and funded him to em-bark on a new series of work, resulting in pieces such as Jumping Shadows in Black & White and Horse and Rider. But money and fame didn't satisfy Hambleton, and by the nineties, with an aggressive and ever-worsening drug habit, he had fallen out of view.
As did Europe, and he toured the continent in the early eighties, painting his shad-owmen on the walls of London, Paris, Berlin and Rome, as well as across Venice for the Biennale in 19. Important New York galleries like the Museum of Modern Art - which held Hambleton exhibitions in both 19 - quickly em-braced him. His reputation established, the artist started to paint the character on canvas. But it was the menacing, life-sized, black-silhouetted figure of his early eighties character, the Shadowman, that propelled him to fame - he painted some 450 of them on the walls of New York City. For these works, of which he created 600 across 15 cities, the American-Canadian would anonymously chalk the outline of volunteer's bodies on US sidewalks, creating a vivid impression of homicide scenes. Like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the streets of New York were his original canvas, and at the height of his prominence in the mid-1980s he was more highly-valued and sought-after than any of his contemporaries, inspiring a new generation of artists including Blek Le Rat and Banksy.Ĭonsidered by many to be the Godfather of street art - a title the artist rejected - Hambleton first appeared on the scene in 1976 with his Mass Murder series. Hambleton was a Canadian-American street artist who is widely credited as the original godfather of street art and kingpin of the creative revolution that exploded in the East Side in the 1980s. 5 Reasons Why Richard Hambleton Is An Artist To Collect
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