Hi-Fructose got a chance to take a peek into the hyper realistic world of Dan Witz. Inspired by punk music and graffiti in the late ’70s, the Brooklyn-based artist has been painting and doing street art, all the while traveling the world. In his 30-plus years of making art, Witz has built his career by virtually staying under the radar. In the early ’80s when he was attending Cooper Union, he saw art as “an agent of change,” but was disillusioned by the commercial art world. He saw it as “exclusive, elitist and kind of boring.”
After being in awe by watching the fully painted New York City subway cars pass by him in the ’80s, Witz decided to paint hummingbirds on the walls of the city. Each bird took him about two hours. It proved to be a cleverly subversive act by a young rebellious kid who had no idea that he had just started a long career in glitches in the matrix. Take a look at some exclusive photos from our visit with Dan Witz below.
