DON ED HARDY

ARTISTS

A Southern California native born in 1945, Hardy acted on his childhood determination to become a tattoo artist and underwent a tattoo apprenticeship while simultaneously receiving a B.F.A. degree in printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967. His specialization in intaglio printmaking, with its “speed of line, rhythm, variety, and density of structure” prepared him well for the career that followed. He turned down a graduate fellowship offer from Yale School of Art and decided instead to begin tattooing professionally.

In 1973 at the invitation of the Japanese tattoo master Horihide, Hardy moved to Gifu, Japan where he studied and tattooed. The following year he opened Realistic Tattoo in San Francisco, a private studio where he undertook unique tattoo commissions tailored to his clients’ wishes and needs. Encouraging unique tattoo commissions from his customers created a permanent shift in Western tattooing with an emphasis on the potential of tattooing as an artistic expression.

In 1986 Hardy moved to Honolulu to concentrate more on his art. For the next ten years he would commute back and forth to San Francisco to tattoo. Hardy discovered that he could utilize imagery he developed as a tattoo artist in compositions that were large and complex. Brushes and pens on paper and canvas presented a challenging departure from tightly controlled tattoo work. 

Hardy returned to printmaking in 1992, and early etchings created at presses in Chicago and San Francisco reveal a simple style akin to the “flash” in his tattoo repertoire. Later prints—particularly those done with Mullowney Printing (Nara, Japan, and San Francisco), Shark’s Ink (Boulder, Colorado), and Magnolia Editions (Oakland)—are larger, colorful, and more ebullient. Hardy describes them as a mix of “the grotesque, humorous, subtle, and flamboyant.”

Major career exhibitions include his first retrospective “Tattooing the Invisible Man” that was mounted at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica in 1999, his epic 500 foot scroll 2000 Dragons which was the focus of exhibitions in five different cities, and his finally major 2019 retrospective “Deeper Than Skin” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In addition to showing his own works, Hardy has curated a number of exhibitions for both galleries and nonprofit spaces and frequently lectures at museums and universities. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals, books, and films internationally. He has written and published more than thirty books on alternative art under the Hardy Marks imprint that he and his wife, Francesca Passalacqua, formed in 1982.

In 2000, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2008 he retired from tattooing to concentrate on art making. Hardy divides his time between his studios in Honolulu and in San Francisco.

"all this stuff is just a way to convey some kind of mystery of existence, to provide some kind of reverberation of whatever it is that animates the whole rodeo"

Don Ed Hardy

AVAILABLE ARTWORKS

BOOKS

PRESS / INTERVIEWS / REVIEWS

HyperAllergic

Two Artist Friends Look to Their Roots for the Future

by Matt Stromberg

December 8, 2022

HyperAllergic

Tattoo Artist Ed Hardy Enters Museum Doors

By Emily Wilson

August 20, 2019

JSTOR Daily

Ed Hardy Changed Tattooing Forever

by Allison C. Meier

August 2, 2019

Forbes

A Day At The Whitney With Don Ed Hardy

By Derek Scancarelli

July 15, 2019

Artnet News

Ed Hardy Is Hated for a Fashion Line He Had Little to Do With. A New Museum Show Is His Path to Redemption

By Sarah Cascone

February 28, 2019

Vice

Tattoo Artist Don Ed Hardy on the Evolution of Tattoo Art in America

By Catherine LaSota

June 5, 2015

LA Review of Books

Hate the Brand, Love the Man: Why Ed Hardy Matters

By Margot Mifflin

August 25, 2013

New York Times

Ed Hardy’s Tattoo City

by Louise Rafkin

August 27, 2011

ArtWeek

Don Ed Hardy at Track 16

by Shana Nys Dambrot

June 2011

SF Gate

Don Ed Hardy's tattoos are high art and big business

by Jesse Hamlin

September 30, 2006

Los Angeles Times

His Body of Work

by Lynell George

December 5, 1999