Demetrio Di Grado: Sicilian Artist Merges Hip Hop, Street Art, and Collage

Demetrio Di Grado, born in Palermo in 1976, is a Sicilian artist who combines hip hop, street art, and collage. After a stint as a rapper from 1994 to 2000, he turned to painting and self-taught art, exhibiting in numerous itinerant, group, and solo shows. In 2012, he founded the ManSourcing Association to promote art. His collages use paper and vinyl glue with fragments from vintage magazines and newspapers (1920s–1950s) to create introspective posters. Di Grado works with poster paper, vinyl, and spray paint, selecting subjects from vintage magazines and adding geometric elements with spray paint. He cites Guido Van Helten, Okuda, and Elian as top street artists, and draws inspiration from writers Bukowski, Machiavelli, and Pessoa, as well as 1990s rap and punk music. He values the ephemeral nature of street art and does not protect his works. Upcoming projects include a poster art project called GLUE PORN in Grotte (Agrigento), the seventh edition of the Ritrovarsi festival in Sciacca, the sixth Collagist Festival in Brussels, and FestiWall in Ragusa with ManSourcing. He will also work with The Blender Gallery in Glifada, Greece, and plans a solo exhibition in 2020.