Who is behind the large portraits in the streets of the world's metropolis?
JR was born in February 1983 and started to take an interest in street art as teenager, who did not want to change the world, but who longed to leave his mark in public spaces. He did not however have any inkling of how successful he would be at that in the future back then.
JR has in particular made his mark in the world of art through the originality and meaningfulness of the projects he has implemented. He is known for his negative view of reductive works promoted via advertising and the media and for questioning widespread prejudices.
The start of contemporary luxury art
JR started to photograph his drawings at the age of 17 and applied the resulting photographs to external walls. While travelling around Europe, he got to know a lot of creative people who continuously helped him to progress. He started to take an interest in the limits of his works, the dimensions, materials, surfaces and structure of cities.
Between 2004 and 2006, he created the luxury collection Portrait of a Generation depicting young people from Paris. He installed these portraits of people who inspired him in huge dimensions on the roofs of Parisian houses. In doing so, he told the world through his art: In the streets, we are reaching out to those people who don’t go to museums.
Luxury works all over the world
You can see huge portraits of people put there by JR in many locations all over the world.
In 2010, he won the TED prize and he invested the USD 100,000 which the prize represented into the new project Inside Out, which was a global art initiative allowing thousands of people all over the world to speak to their community via portraits displayed in public places. He for example also presented himself and his work with this project on Times Square in New York.
Apart from other works, he created luxury installations for the Olympic Games which were held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and his collaboration with the New York City Ballet is well known.
