Words: Jiro Kohl
By 1983, New York City’s graffiti scene was full blown from handball courts to trains to galleries. However, in the Netherlands, the graffiti explosion was just sparking up. Amsterdam’s Delta helped ignite a graf madness that rolled over his native country and eventually, a 3D letter binge across the globe. And though many tried to emulate Delta’s progressive style, not everyone had a fiend-like focus. Imagine the Hamsterdam experiment in your hometown—what a mess!
The originators of Dutch graffiti started writing after Faith Of Graffiti found its way into the country, and began using walls as a vehicle for political messages. And from there, it grew and grew. “It was an interesting time,” says Delta, of Amsterdam’s graf adolescence. “Other people picked [graf] up without knowing that it existed somewhere else as well.”
After about eight years of putting in work bombing, Delta (who also wrote Mess) became a staple in the Dutch scene with a clean hand style and flawless pieces. After a three-year graf sabbatical and influenced by his studies in product design, he started painting again in ’91, this time as if his letters were structures. “I tried to incorporate my knowledge of thinking in dimensions to lettering, drawing my name as if it would come off the wall,” Delta says. “It took me a while to get right. At one point I did a Mess outline in [NY] Noah’s blackbook that took me days. But then I understood the principle of how to do it.”
Looking for a legit hustle and a way to preserve his work, Delta began to seek different mediums to bring to life, labeling himself a graphic designer. In 2000, he collaborated with fellow greats, Futura and Mode 2, to design the inside of Club More in Modena, Italy. The DEFUMO Project (from the first letters in their names) crumbled the walls, combining all three kings’ signature styles to create a world of futuristic fantasy. Always looking ahead of the curve, Delta admits, “It was very inspiring to work on. It brought me a lot of ideas that I was able to use later on.” Building off the project, he’s worked on many other installations across the globe.
“[My work] is about how things get covered by fungus,” he explains. “Like how graffiti covers a city or how a city covers the land.” It’s like space vehicles fell to earth and, flattened by the force, slapped onto Amsterdam’s buildings and slid into studios. But there’s room for Delta in your home too, as he’s also designed more than 30 record covers for local Amsterdam record labels and artists like Aardvarck, DJ Vadim and Carl Craig, as well as some American acts such as Linkin Park. Delta’s also expanded into real 3D with his own vinyl toy robot named Radar: part Transformer, part 8-bit computer game. Never one to permanently retire to the coffee shop, this Dutch master stays busy with side projects galore.
