Chaz Bojorquez

Chaz Bojorquez grew up in East Los Angeles in the ’50s and ’60s, and began his involvement with graffiti art during the late 1960s. His career as an artist began with tagging neighborhood fences and buildings, where he adopted the underground, punk street-art ethos. Initially he was inspired by the tradition of cholo writing, where Latino gangs would tag their neighborhoods to define their territory. Bojorquez then pursued calligraphy training at Chouinard Art School where he developed his own unique stylized font, combining typographical characters with psychedelic imagery, before dropping out after two years. After securing a reputation as a master of street art, he pursued commercial endeavors at companies such as Disney and Vans. Throughout his career, Bojorquez has brought graffiti recognition as an established contemporary art form.