Hackatao
Hackatao is a renowned artist duo birthed in Milan in 2007, who has been pioneering the crypto art space since 2018. They are known across the community for their iconic contemporary creation style which incorporates elements of street art, graphic design, tattoo art and more. Hackatao’s artworks span across mediums and artistic genres, yet almost always carry important social commentary, often centered psychology, humanity, the environment and crypto. Their artworks include a number of symbols, nods to pop culture and historic references.
Their distinct and unique style, a combination of incredulously detailed hand-drawn artwork and a colorful, vibrantly painted 2D design style, makes the duo stand out amongst the growing community of crypto artists. The harmonious and continuous flow of drawings, at times recalling the graffiti art in the play of fluxes and connections, finds its “cage “and home in the very defined pop borders and figures, resulting in a uniform visual whole.
Their name, Hackatao, is a combination of the words Hack for diving beyond the surface to discovery meanings and understandings, and Tao, a reference to the Yin and Yang of their creative dynamic balance. As early crypto art pioneers, the duo are amongst the most celebrated crypto art OGs and have consistently remained on the list for top 10 highest grossing crypto artists of all time.
In The News
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Notable Sales
Hackatao has been a leader in the crypto art market since its inception years ago. They have consistently remained amongst the highest grossing crypto artists of all time (currently ranked 8).
Hackatao’s Queen of Pop, in which 59 editions were sold for a primary sale price of $2,300 and achieved quick success on the secondary sales market with an average resale price of $8067 (+250.75%). Their 98 edition artwork Queen of Multitude instantly sold out and saw an increase of +283%, with an original sales price of $999 and average secondary sales price of $3,827. Hackatao’s iconic pieces have been selling for $100K+, with Queeny recently selling for 140 ETH (~$211,272), with recent secondary volume topping ~$577,350 in a single day.
Most recently, Hackatao joined forces with José Delbo on Heroines, which resulted in a total of $1.85 million in gross sales, including a $23,196 donation to Girls Who Code.
Queen of Art
Digital art duo Hackatao celebrate the impact and importance of women in art in their Queen of Art series. An audiovisual ode to the great women creators of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Artist Statement
Queen of Art
Sublimating grief, making art
A brush stroke is a sublime gesture for the self-crowning as “Queen of Art” and restate, in front of history and of the world of today, where the real creative power actually belongs.
After all, it is precisely a woman who is credited with the invention of painting: as told by Pliny the Elder, the daughter of the potter Butades of Sicyon drew on a wall the silhouette of her lover’s profile, lit by a lamp, shortly before he left her. The father then made a clay sculpture out of it.
The origin of painting is the title given by many artists, such as David Allan and Jean-Baptiste Regnault, to their representation of such a scene. Drawing and painting, then, are born out of a woman’s strive to overcome her grief and seize, outside the flowing of time, the happiness that time has taken away from her.
Art is a visceral phenomenon: just like childbirth, it goes through pain to reaffirm life and renew once more the human dare to death.
For this reason, our “Queen of Art,” takes on a special meaning in 2021, in this uncertain and anguishing time, where despair and inability to picture a future often seem to prevail. The celebration of female creative power is an invitation to trust in the hope of rebirth and the reflourishing of life, a rebirth in which we hope that art will play a major role, as it was for many of the female artists that we remember here.
Art was the redemption of Artemisia Gentileschi, raped by her teacher and then subjected to a humiliating trial: thanks to her skill, though, she developed an independent and successful painting career across Europe.
Frida Kahlo, forced to lie on a bed after a severe accident, found a sense in her pain and grief through art: everything she could do in that moment was to stare at her image in the mirror and paint, but it made her immortal.
Leonora Carrington, partner of Ernst Bloch, drowned the ghosts populating her mind, the surrealist visions of her paintings, after the tortures she had suffered in the asylum at the outbreak of the Second World War, before she could find refuge in Mexico.
Art was the mount of the sculptress Augusta Savage in her battles for the recognition of the rights of the Afro-American community, after her application for a summer art course had been rejected because of her race.
Artistic abstraction was a refuge also for Lee Krasner after her initial professional failures and the death of her husband Jackson Pollock: in her own words, “I like a canvas to breathe and be alive. Being alive is the point. And, as the limitations are something called pigment and canvas, let’s see if I can do it”.
Art was the refuge also of Margaret Keane, in her representation of children with big, often sad eyes, especially in the period when her husband was claiming to be the author of her paintings. She was eventually able to expose his treachery and justice was made.
The profound union between pain and art, in the research for the fullness of life and spiritual sublimation, is at the heart of Marina Abramovic’s exploration through the extreme performances in which she pushes her body’s potential to the limit. In this way, art and pain become one, affecting her own personal experience: through the words “l’art c’est moi”, she completely takes possession of art and through her body definitively makes it a woman. Art is woman and art is the queen: with her creative power she leads us, her people, in the battle against the passing of time.
Our invitation to the women of today is not to despair and to gather the legacy of these powerful artists.
Queen of Art (1/1)
Editions: One
Pricing: Accepting Offers Only
* 24 hour auction will ensue once reserve price is met
Queen of Color – Open Edition
Editions: Open Limited Edition
Pricing: $23,000
* Artwork will be available for purchase for 15 minutes only, from 3:30-3:45 PM PST on 3/23
Edition #2, #3 and a random edition will be retained by the artists.
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