Paris Subway Map

Nasty (b. 1974, French) Paris Subway Map (2014) Aerosol, marker and acrylic painting on a metro subway map sheet signed in his lettering in the lower right, measuring 29 x 39 inches. Second generation French street/graffiti artist, Nasty, uses bright colors and calligraphic lettering to break any monotony and keep the graffiti spirit/scene alive and unique.

Nasty is a notorious French street artist who is best known for spraying metro plans , enamel signs, and ceramic tiles from the RATP Parisian subway system. In 1988 he was marking walls and metros with his lettering and became known in the French graffiti community of the 1990’s. Preferring the creation of ‘art’ to committing ‘vandalism’, Nasty began to transform outdated and unused subway signs with his spray cans and his style of lettering. His artistic work since 1988 was recorded in the Book “Nasty and Slice, Artists on The Run” and his work has been seen in prestigious galleries and institutions such as Danisz Magda Gallery, Palais de Chaillot, the Galerie Hélène Bailly, the Grand Palais and the Musée en Herbe.


Nasty started graffiti at the age of 13 in Paris. Passionate about the Hip-Hop movement and fascinated by the street artists of New York, he directs his work towards simple letters and acid colors, getting noticed by painting colorful graffiti on trains. He worked above all on the typography of his name, which very quickly appeared everywhere in metro tunnels, on the banks of the Seine and along the railway tracks. He appropriates all the elements of urban aesthetics. It is his works on the metro maps that make him known in galleries, "pieces" of Paris exhibited as witnesses of an era.