Kendo

Born in Paris in 1979, Kendo began writing graffiti in 1993, moving between skateboarding and tagging across the capital. In the late 1990s, he relocated to Bordeaux, where he co-founded the Peinture Fraîche and Transfert collectives in the early 2000s, helping shape the local graffiti scene. By 2003, he had begun transitioning toward gallery work, bringing a more painterly dimension to his pieces.

Extended stays in New York and Brazil — where he traveled four times, including a period from 2015 to 2018 with residencies at Alliance Française locations — profoundly enriched his visual vocabulary. A muralist, calligrapher, and colorist, he describes himself as a cosmic graffiti writer and creates vivid, intensely colorful frescoes that seek to bring poetry and vitality to often grey and sterile urban environments.

Now based in Biarritz, he works between southwestern France and international destinations, approaching his craft empirically without formal training in paint chemistry, embracing creative accidents as part of the process. Each mural takes into account the wall's format, texture, and surrounding environment, integrating the work into its architectural context.