BATES Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1971 -

Born in 1971 in Copenhagen, Bates began writing graffiti as a young boy and by the mid of ’80s he became one of the most prolific artists in his native country.
As the graffiti artist of the second generation of a Danish Graffiti movement, Bates is one of the few who still follow this classic, traditional style in writing graffiti. Although he experimented a lot, he never followed the trends and there are some elements that the artist uses over and over again.
Bates combines the traditional graffiti writing styles developed in New York, accentuating the logic flow of letters, dynamic and swinging rhythms of shapes, with the essence of Europe, including sharp lines and graphic elements.


Already in the late ‘80s Bates was one of the leading European graffiti artists, along with artists such as Loomit from Munich, Mode 2 and Bando from Paris, Delta and Shoe from Amsterdam. During his career he has been invited to paint in many big venues around the continent and overseas, but he has never revealed his face in photographs. Grew up with the anonymity of the graffiti culture, he stayed mysterious and still guards his privacy intensely.


In 2009, the graffiti writer has his first solo show entitled It’s about time at Copenhagen Street Wear. Since then Bates has shown his work in many solo exhibitions presenting his works on canvas. One of his latest shows called Style in Progress, at Partisan Creative Corner, is a celebration of the progress the artist has made in thirty years of graffiti writing. Combining graffiti writing style with fun graphics and cartoon characters for Style in Progress, the Danish artist offers a balance of both the history of graffiti and where it can be taken in the future by Bates.



Great Bates is a street art duo who has been active since 1986. While Great mostly tags walls and evoke an old school style, Bates’ individual work consists more of sharp, swooping characters. Together Great and Bates have painted walls around the world, including Africa, UK, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Turkey and the United States, to name a few.