RETNA | Original Green Calligraphy Artwork

RETNA (Marquis Lewis, b. 1979)
Original Green Calligraphy Artwork
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas | 301 × 167 cm

At three metres in length, this is not a painting you encounter so much as enter. RETNA — born Marquis Lewis in Los Angeles in 1979 — developed one of the most immediately identifiable visual languages in contemporary art: a constructed script drawing on Egyptian hieroglyphics, Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy, Gothic blackletter, and the graffiti tradition of his teenage years in the Mid-City neighbourhood. The resulting system is both ancient-feeling and entirely modern — a script that reads as language without being legible, communicating across cultures precisely because it belongs to none of them in isolation.

This monumental canvas is executed in deep, layered emerald green — a palette that gives the work an almost architectural weight. The impasto surface shifts as light moves across it, metallic and crystalline elements embedded in the paint catching differently depending on the hour. At this scale, the rhythmic pulse of RETNA's mark-making becomes fully apparent: each passage of script flows into the next with the controlled momentum of someone who has been working at this level of discipline for three decades.

RETNA has collaborated with Louis Vuitton, Nike, and Chanel; designed the album cover for Justin Bieber's Purpose; created operatic sets for AIDA at the Washington National Opera and San Francisco Opera; and decorated a VistaJet tailfin — a commission that valued the completed aircraft at $60 million. His work sells consistently at five figures on the secondary market and is held in institutional collections internationally. Works of this scale are rarely available.

Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot. Private viewings by appointment for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London. White-glove installation and in-home digital rendering available on request.

Original work
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
301 × 167 cm (approx. 118.5 × 65.7 in)
Certificate of Authenticity