Graffiti Legend Lee Quiñones on Going From the Subway Into the Studio

“I’ve always found myself having to defend my past by not getting trapped by it,” Lee Quiñones told me. “People always want to put you in that box of nostalgia.”   We’re standing in front of his new paintings at his cozy Brooklyn studio on a grey April morning. The works are incomplete for now, merely “atmospheric backgrounds” of colors and forms, Quiñones explained, on which he will draw, paint, and tag. Once finished, the pieces are bound for his third showing at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, in an exhibition called “Quinquagenary.” Lee Quiñones’s studio. Photo: Min Chen. The show’s title nods to the 50th year since Quiñones, who was born in Puerto Rico before moving to New York at a young age, spray painted his first subway car at 14 years old. As one of the city’s earliest graffiti painters, Quiñones would be recognized for his ever-more ambitious (and surprisingly poetic) murals, which set him apart from what he called the “alphabet soup” of tags. He played a role in Wild Style (1983), Charlie Ahearn’s seminal hip-hop film, and in Blondie’s decade-defining video for “Rapture” (1980), which also featured Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Quiñones appreciates the romance and nostalgia attached...