10 Street Artists Share Their Admiration for Os Gemeos

This feature is a part of Complex's Os Gemeos Week, presented by Hennessy.

To learn just how much Os Gemeos have impacted graffiti, street art, and art as a whole, we asked 10 street artists to share stories about meeting the twins, collaborating on projects with them, and how they’ve changed the game. From Martha Cooper to How & Nosm, the responses are diverse and moving, showing just how much Os Gemeos have made a real journey from graffiti to galleries, museums, and the rest of the world.

"The first time I saw Os Gemeos paint was when they were working on their mural for the outside of the Tate Modern in 2008. Watching the piece evolve and the reactions to the brilliant yellows and oranges against the grey London sky, their piece stood out as a beacon of a divergent direction appearing in street art at the time...a break from the traditional idea of graffiti as an exclusive destructive movement/vandalism into a means of inclusive personal storytelling that the average person, regardless of artistic background, can relate to. Their work, along with the work of Blu and others raised the awareness of street art/graffiti to the mainstream as a viable art movement. Now, we can all be taken more seriously as skilled artists rather than criminals."

"The strength of any artist is in their ability to translate the world in their head onto the canvas in a way that is believable. Nobody does that better than Os Gemeos.

The balaclava-clad graffiti writers in their paintings weave in and out of pattern-saturated backgrounds, blending into the painting much the same way that real graffiti writers are able to emerge and retreat into the night, unseen. These patterns are a stylistic metaphor of the city itself. The background noise of daily life is reimagined as a pattern. It's a fitting platform to show the adventures of their figures exploring the world and leaving their mark in it. It's a universal story that everybody can relate to in some way.

I've been familiar with the twins since shortly before 1999 when they released a vinyl toy along with Shepard Fairey, Barry McGee, Margret Kilgallen, and Stash. Since then, it's been amazing to watch their growth. Each show they have had builds upon the previous one, and you feel like you are reading a chapter of a slowly unfolding book.

I've met Octavio and Gustavo once or twice, but it was nothing more than a causal handshake and a quick 'hello.' Even still, it's impossible not to feel like you know something about them through their art. Their story is told through can and brush. You can see the influence of graffiti-of color, of travel, and of their culture. It's there on the wall. You can't look at their paintings of people standing on the shoulders of each other to tag as high and possible and not imagine those are the twins themselves. It's as though their autobiography is written on the walls around them.

It's been said that out of every art movement there are only 10 artists remembered 50 years after the movement ends. The twins clearly will be one of those 10. They are one of the most talented examples of the international connectivity of graffiti and street culture."

"I first came across their work in Munich in 1998. I went out there and stayed with Loomit who had met them on a trip to Brazil, noted how talented they were, and brought them over to Europe to paint. They adapted really well to the European style of painting, especially with the German graffiti artists they tended to work with."

European paint technology really changed the way they worked. It's mad that they've become so famous; I still see them as the Brazilian graffiti twins. They definitely learned a great deal from Loomit, as well as Barry McGee, from when both artists visited the twins in Sao Paolo, but I guess we've all learned a lot from them along the way, too (in particular, how not to be afraid of the color yellow!)."

"I met Os Gemeos for the first time in December 1997 when Raven and I went to São Paulo to do a big story on them for 12 Oz. Prophet Magazine that would show them to the world. I knew how to say two rude phrases in Portuguese but didn't know how to say hello or thank you, and the twins knew all the lines from Style Wars and Wild Style but not much else.

There aren't a lot of days that truly change the course of one's life, but my first day in Brazil, from the moment they picked me up at the airport, was one of them. My Portuguese and the twins' English have also gotten way better."

"Os Gemeos are amazing to watch when they're painting live. They work fast and seamlessly together. We saw them at work at the Baltic in New Castle and in London on the walls of the Tate Modern. We have never seen artists work so fast and technical together; it is truly a sight to behold.

They were the first Latin American artists to be recognized globally in the contemporary urban art scene. We feel that the twins were the first graf artists to successfully bridge graffiti into the world of fine art other than Barry McGee. There have been many graffiti artists that have attempted to transition their work from the streets to the gallery, but few of them have done it as well or as ambitiously as Os Gemeos."

"I love that Os Gemeos still paint highly original letter pieces. I see them as artists who are driving the street art movement forward by also connecting it to its graffiti roots."

"We were lucky enough to meet Os Gemeos for the first time about three years ago in Miami. They are two great guys with extraordinary talents. We have so much respect for people who have strong roots in graffiti, have come from the right beginning, and then made a transition and progressed to something else. Os Gemeos are perfect examples of that!

Whenever someone from a traditional graffiti past goes on to have the kind of mainstream success that they have had, it's always super inspirational and so great for graffiti as a whole!"

"We got introduced to Os Gemeos through Daze when they came to New York for the first time in 1999. We, including Daze, Crash, and the Tats Cru, painted a large production (graffiti mural) in the Bronx.

We remember looking through magazines back in '97 while we still lived in Germany, and the very distinctive work of the Brazilian twins was always present. They made the rest of the graffiti movement around the world have a closer look at the Brazilian graffiti scene. Before there were the Internet and blogs, you got famous through graffiti magazines and your own travels. They made their country popular, and soon writers from around the world would go to Brazil to enjoy the freedom to paint in the streets of Brazil. They are a big part of South American graffiti history, since they have been around for so long and worked so hard.

They are the pioneers there, but they've also left their mark in so many countries. They have influenced so many writers and street artists to dare to try out new styles and techniques. They made their way into the art world so successfully that one can't imagine the scene without them.

We are proud to have worked with them in several occasion and remained friends over the years. Obregado."

"I've never had the honor of meeting the twins, but from where I sit, they are pioneers of what we do. They create beautiful works that speak to a wide audience, but they also have commentary in their art that speaks directly to everyone who has ever picked up a can of paint. As soon as you see their work, it makes you want to go out and paint something."

"The first time I met Os Gemeos was in 2003. They didn't speak much English, and I didn't speak much Portuguese, so we took the vegetables out of our soups and made boats, villages, houses, people. We went sailing around the table. We built up and took apart tiny worlds. I knew I'd love them forever. Those two are the most exuberantly inventive voices of our generation. They can break open any block on any street anywhere in the world and make it come to life."