The letters
The bed: since 1998, writing a name — and counting.
Before the series, the machines and the museums there was a name. Several, actually: Cadillac, Snef, Pant, Pant1, Pantone. Between 1998 and 2013 Felipe worked on one thing above all — the signature as a practice, repeated over time and at different scales — and that practice trained him for what came after: scale, rhythm, repetition, presence. Nothing to do, at first, with the color guide: the coincidence was discovered later. Graffiti is not the prehistory of the work. It is its first system.
Graffiti also teaches that a work can be brief: you paint it, photograph it and let it go. The record rests on the photograph and on the craft. The scene was his first context — GRAFFILIA, FCAP, KST, D.O.C.S., and from 2011 UltraBoyz — and in it he tried out different styles, from wildstyle to characters, photorealism and calligraphy, until he was left with his own by elimination.
The clues to the chromatic program are painted on the wall years in advance. 2004, Orihuela: a wall with a painted CMYK color bar and the inscription "8bits.color.CMYK", the first reference to a color system in the whole corpus. 1999, Torrevieja: the first "PANTONE" painted on a street. 2005: he becomes part of Montana Cans' Spanish Writer Team; for the first time he is invited on a trip outside Spain to put his name up, in Heidelberg, Germany. 2006: he founds D.O.C.S. with Ausias Pérez and the experiments with letters begin — typographic illustration. 2009: the concept enters in full — "HERE LIES STREET-ART" in monumental grass-textured letters, the epitaph of the street-art boom painted by someone from inside.
The era ends the way it began: on the street. In 2011 he joins UltraBoyz and works for a year as SEEN's assistant in Valencia; in 2012 he paints his first monumental facade in Ukraine; in 2013 op art eats the letters: moiré fields, RGB lines, the name dissolving into pure optics. Everything else comes from there. And the street practice, in parallel, stays present: the book documenting this era runs through 2025.
«Mi primer tag, escucha esto, estoy muy orgulloso: mi primer nombre fue «Cadillac». ¿A que es bueno?»
Felipe Pantone, Juxtapoz 2020
- 1998First piece painted at age twelve in Torrevieja (Alicante). First tag: Cadillac; then Snef, then Pant. Since then, never more than a week without painting.OCIMAG 2016, Juxtapoz 2020, Handstyler 2015
- 1999–2000First dated photos: a "PANT" piece in blue blocks and a crew photo of some eight teenagers, in the Torrevieja area. In 2000, first train: a white throw-up on a window panel.Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2003First style pivot: the letters become abstract, almost machine-like shapes, with circuit-line halos. Torrevieja, Orihuela, Barcelona, Alicante, Madrid.Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2004A wall in Orihuela with a painted CMYK color bar and the inscription "8bits.color.CMYK": the first reference to a color system in his graffiti. The FCAP and KST crews recur from this year on. Around 2006 (exact year pending verification) he moves to Valencia and paints with D.O.C.S.Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti) · Wikipedia · sprayplanet
- 2005"PANTONE 05. FCAPS TRES.", a street wall in Torrevieja. First graffiti trips across Europe; walls in Heidelberg with SEAL. Relationship with Montana Cans "oficialmente desde 2005" (officially since 2005).Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti) · Praesentia · Montana Cans 2018
- 2006He starts Fine Arts at the Facultad de San Carlos in Valencia (UPV). On the wall: a massive jam of several writers in the Torrevieja underpass; "Pant1 06" in Barcelona.Praesentia · Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2007Breakout year. Seville's water tower — Alf, a Rubik's cube, "FINEST" — painted from lift platforms with a printed reference. A South Bronx rooftop: "I ♥ NY", signed "PANTONE.GRAFFILIA.SOUTHBRONX." and dated 1.OCT.2007. London: the police-car piece, "To the boys in blue… …catch me if you can." First exhibition: the opening show of Valencia's Mr. Pink space is his; its director, María Tinoco, had discovered him painting in the street.Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti) · monografía FPSTUDIO · Valencia Plaza 2014
- 2008PANTONE everywhere: flat heraldic letters ("EL ZURDO", the twin GOD FELLAS productions in Seville and Bilbao), RENFE freight cars under the PANTONE name, first glitch and scanline letter experiments. A collaboration in Ghent (Belgium).Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2009Second pivot: the concept enters. Text murals satirizing the street-art boom: "HERE LIES STREET-ART" (Zaragoza, monumental grass-textured letters), "it's NOT YOU, it's ME", "Doing Only Crooked Shit" (D.O.C.S. written out in full, stamped in Brussels, the Basque Country and Amsterdam). Proto-glitch ghost letters. Trains in Milan with DEIR and BLOK.Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2010A year in Leeds (pending verification; the book documents walls in Leeds, 2010) (Erasmus); graffiti in Leeds and London. In Valencia he paints "future is now": the motto precedes the studio career by years. A wall in collaboration with ARYZ + DOCS.Praesentia · Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2011He joins UltraBoyz, a European crew. Richard "SEEN" Mirando sets up a studio in Valencia and hires him as an assistant for a year. Many trips to Paris, carrying SEEN's work from Valencia to the galleries. The book also documents several pieces in the Paris metro.Praesentia · Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti)
- 2012Scale and abstraction arrive at the same time. First monumental facade: Kamianets-Podilskyi (Ukraine), Respublica festival, with Demsky — confirmed by the artist: an eight-hour train ride with no water to Kyiv, then four hours of potholes, and a Soviet crane run by a guy who kept drinking. Inscribed "КРІЗЬ ГАЛАКТИКУ ДО ЗІРОК" ("through the galaxy to the stars"). First pictorial abstraction without letters (garage doors, Spain). First documented trip to Japan: a silver piece on a rooftop.Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti) · relato de Felipe, 4 jul 2026
- 2013Op art dissolves the letters inside graffiti itself: an Eindhoven piece built from nothing but stripe fields and moiré; an RGB piece of concentric lines in Valencia; an op PANT signed "F. PANTONE 2013" in Amsterdam. On 23 October, Carlos Cruz-Diez writes to congratulate him on a graffiti piece dedicated to the master: "¡¡¡Bravo, mi querido artista, que buenas variantes has encontrado en mi obra!!!" ("Bravo, my dear artist, what good variants you have found in my work!")Beyond The Streets (libro de grafiti) · Praesentia · Valencia Plaza 2019
