Eltono (French, b. 1975) is a street and graffiti artist who has painted directly on walls in public space since 1999. Since 2010 his practice has centred on generative wall paintings, in which he studies a wall's dimensions and surroundings, devises a grid-based protocol of shapes and colours to fit it, then executes that protocol by hand, often with dice, square by square.
Born in France, Eltono went on to work in Madrid for a decade and then in Beijing for four years before returning to live in southern France.Graffiti led him to art school, and seeing his street work led to his first gallery show in 2001.His first significant mural came as a 2008 commission from Tate Modern for its “Street Art” exhibition in London.,He has since painted in more than 120 cities and shown at venues including Somerset House in London, the Fundació Miró in Barcelona, and the Artium Museum in Vitoria.
In 2006 he collaborated with the artist MOMO to install a series of mechanical sculptures on the beaches and waters of Manhattan.Eltono has also worked at a communal scale, at times directing as many as 200 participants in painting a single generative wall together.
Eltono discovered NFTs in January 2021 through a friend's message and began minting generative work on platforms including Art Blocks and fxhash. He traces his path into the NFT space to discovering the generative artist Jeff Davis's work in early 2021, which led him to Art Blocks. Art Blocks' mint-then-generate model mirrored an idea he had long pursued in his own gallery practice, selling a work before it existed as a way of securing the collector's commitment. Outside the NFT world, he counts Sol LeWitt and Francis Alÿs among his favourite artists.
