Richard Hambleton | Nightlife | Standing Shadow

Richard Hambleton (1952–2017)
Nightlife | Standing Shadow
Mixed media on paper | Original

The Shadowman is Hambleton's defining contribution to the visual language of the late twentieth century: a silhouette, painted in black, appearing on unexpected surfaces in cities around the world. In the early 1980s, these figures haunted Manhattan's Lower East Side — present at the edge of vision, suggesting danger in a city that still carried real danger on its streets. Banksy has cited them as a direct influence. Blek le Rat has said Hambleton's work was the first street art he ever encountered that genuinely moved him.

Nightlife | Standing Shadow belongs to the body of work Hambleton produced in his later career — studio works on paper that translate the Shadowman's outdoor presence into an intimate, collected format. The scale is personal rather than monumental; the medium is mixed, carrying the material richness of an artist who worked in many processes; the image retains every quality of the street works: immediacy, darkness, the sense of a figure that has just arrived and might not stay.

Hambleton's work is held in the Brooklyn Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. His market has strengthened significantly since the Tribeca documentary Shadowman and the Rizzoli retrospective of 2022. Works on paper of this quality are among the most accessible entry points into his catalogue.

Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot. Private viewings by appointment for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.

Original
Mixed media on paper
Certificate of Authenticity
Full provenance documentation