FUTURA 2000 (b. Leonard Hilton McGurr, 1955, New York, NY) is an artist whose practice first developed within the genre of graffiti in New York City during the 1970s. He was among the earliest artists to introduce abstraction into the art form and among the first to break barriers and show in contemporary art galleries in the early 1980s. Exhibitions of his early work include presentations at Patti Astor’s Fun Gallery and Tony Shafrazi Gallery. MoMA PS1’s landmark 1981 New York/ New Wave exhibition presented Futura alongside colleagues and friends Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rammellzee, and Kenny Scharf.

FUTURA is regarded as one of the world’s most dynamic collaborators and has built a rich oeuvre of intersectional work with artists—across multiple genres. In the 1980s, FUTURA first collaborated with the punk band The Clash, designing album packaging and painting on large scale canvases as they performed live in concert. In the 1990s and 2000s, he was a foundational artistic force for the brands Supreme and A Bathing Ape by Nigo and one of the first three non-athletes ever to have a Nike sneaker. In recent years, he has created collaborative art editions with Takashi Murakami and has exhibited at Kaikai KiKi Gallery in Tokyo. In 2018 and 2019, he worked with Virgil Abloh on collections for Off-White, site specific installations for Louis Vuitton, and stage performance visuals for Coachella. In 2020, he co-designed a runway collection with Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons SHIRT and has been a long-time collaborator of the iconic French fashion designer Agnès b.

FUTURA’s work is included in collections such as The New Museum, New York; MOCA, Los Angeles; Groninger Museum, the Netherlands; Yvon Lambert, Galerie De Noirmont; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, and Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, and Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, NY. In 2020, the Isamu Noguchi Museum presented FUTURA Akari, an installation of Akari light sculptures customized by FUTURA 2000. In the same year, the artist created a large site-specific installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and was included in the exhibition Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip Hop Generation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 2020, Rizzoli New York published FUTURA: The Artist’s Monograph, the most in-depth and comprehensive survey of the artist’s life and career. In 2022, the non-profit arts organization Free Arts NYC honored Futura and established a scholarship in his name for his dedication to underserved youths. The University at Buffalo, NY, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts presented FUTURA 2000: Breaking Out, a retrospective spanning the artist’s creative trajectory spanning over forty years.

FUTURA 2000 lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. The creative and artist management agency ICNCLST represents the artist’s global fine art and commercial projects.