Benten

Friedrich Benzler, who signs his walls as Benten, was born in 1980 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz, and got into graffiti there in 1994. He trained as a painter and completed his apprenticeship at nineteen, then moved from the local scene to commissioned murals, favouring lifelike portraits worked entirely in black and grey. Since his first pieces in the Sonnenberg district in 1997 he has taken part in some thirty projects and twenty exhibitions, from Chemnitz to Siegen, Cologne, Brussels and Madrid. In 2012 the Colorrevolution association invited him to Cologne to paint a gable wall in the Ehrenfeld district. He now divides his time between murals, illustration and tattooing, which he practises from his studio in Chemnitz.