Angel Ortiz — known as LA II or LA2, Little Angel — began writing graffiti on the streets and subway cars of New York's Lower East Side at the age of ten. Born in 1967, he was introduced to Keith Haring in 1980 and the two developed one of the most celebrated artistic collaborations of the decade: Haring's bold cartoon figures combined with Ortiz's dense, intricate pattern-filling and calligraphic mark-making, the two visual languages in dialogue in a way that proved genuinely more than the sum of its parts.
The collaboration lasted six years and produced some of the most significant works in the history of street art. Ortiz's contribution was specific and irreplaceable — the fill, the tunnels, the interlocking patterns that gave the joint works their depth, texture, and street credibility. Without his mark-making, Haring's figures would have occupied a different kind of space. The works they made together are among the defining visual documents of 1980s New York.
His independent practice — developed before, during, and after the Haring collaboration — draws on the same wild-style vocabulary he developed as a child on the Lower East Side, now matured into a sophisticated visual language of considerable density and rhythmic energy. His Mona Haring work, bringing together the most iconic image in Western art history with the visual language of his most celebrated collaboration, demonstrates the cultural range and formal intelligence of his practice at its most confident.
As one of the surviving figures of the original 1980s New York street art movement, Ortiz's work carries a historical significance that no younger artist can replicate. Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
