Jose Parla valuation
Paints walls as they weather — layered, scratched, written over and half erased.
Jose Parla was born in Miami in 1973 to Cuban parents who had left the island, and began writing graffiti as a teenager before studying in Savannah and Miami.
What a work by Jose Parla is worth
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Bio
Jose Parla was born in Miami in 1973 to Cuban parents who had left the island, and began writing graffiti as a teenager before studying in Savannah and Miami. The paintings are built like a wall that has been posted, painted over, scratched and weathered for years: layers of plaster, paint and ink with calligraphic writing running through them, illegible by design, so that what remains is the trace of language rather than language. He has made large commissions for One World Trade Center and Brooklyn Academy of Music, and works in Brooklyn.
Unique paintings on canvas and on panel lead the market, with scale a major factor. The layered plaster-and-paint surfaces are thick, textured and physically fragile at the edges, and any loss is difficult to make good invisibly, so condition matters and shipping history is worth understanding. There is a modest print output. Provenance to a documented gallery or commission is the usual reference point.
The Inkheads, Barclays Center and One World Trade Center
Parlá began painting on walls in Miami at ten, signing as Ease, and in 1992 he and his brother Rey helped found the Miami graffiti collective The Inkheads. He won a scholarship to the Savannah College of Art and Design at sixteen and later studied at Miami Dade Community College and the New World School of the Arts, before moving to the Bronx and designing album covers for hip-hop artists including Gang Starr.
In 2012 he painted Diary of Brooklyn, a 70-foot mural for the Barclays Center, and worked with JR on a mural installation for the Havana Biennial, and in 2015 he painted ONE: Union of the Senses, 90 feet long, for the lobby of One World Trade Center. A painting is identified by its title, date and the gallery's documentation.
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