Santiago Uceda urban art

Known as an urban folk artist, Santiago Uceda is a famous Peruvian graphic designer and illustrator appreciated world wide. His works have been displayed at the Tender Loving Empire in Portland/ Oregon, but this is barely the only example of his exhibitions. His love for the visual urban art may be a result of the small community that he grew up in.Uceda says, a small community of artists is less competitive and more friendly and helping one another. When artists tend to help one another, they promote and develop art itself.

Santiago Uceda graphic design

The main target of Uceda’s art is the pre-Columbian Incan art, the inks used, being as well inspired from the Peruvian old urban art style, known as full of life and vibrant.

It is said that Santiago Uceda has also a thing for Catholic iconography and believed to have been influenced by several other graphic designers such as Joan Miro, Henrik Dresher, Egon Shiele and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The tools he uses are more likely common, like acrylic paint combined with pen ink on canvas.

As a personal history, Santiago started his life as an illustrator and art designer in 1996 when he graduated from Cal State University Fullerton in 1996, obtaining a bachelor degree in Fine Arts. That was the actual start. From that moment on he became a freelancer, working with The Progressive and Hispanic Magazine. This lasted for about five years. Afterwords, he collaborated also as a graphic designer with the South Coast Repertory and Orange Performing Arts Center.

Cards – Santiago Uceda

Also doing designs for the Terra Magazine, Santiago says that this is the something he loves best, because here, he has the opportunity to work with some other great designers. As said before, working together is a good thing, in Uceda’s opinion, because art has its way of combining itself when great people stay together, the result being extraordinary.

Santiago Uceda’s latest illustration portfolio contains, as the urban art designer himself says, a collection of gig posters and apparel design, his designs being printed often by a lot of important stores and sites such as Ryz, designbyhumans, teefury, shirtwoot. As it can be observed, his t-shirts are in general very popular.

As another distinctive feature, he is a member of the Black Rock Collective, a group well known when it comes to graphic art designers. As a member of this group, he exhibited his work at the Threadless store in Chicago.

We can only hope to hear more of his urban art in the future!