The Swatch CreArt Collection adds a new chapter to the story of Swatch and Art. Like many great relationships, this one began in Paris, where the first Art Special was launched at the Pompidou Centre in 1985. That first encounter sparked a series of innovative joint projects with artists and fashion designers from around the world.

Swatch’s playful and creative approach to the arts continues to inspire the most innovative and exciting of today’s – and tomorrow’s – artists and designers. The Swiss fashion watch and jewellery maker has asked four internationally known artists to contribute to the exciting story of Swatch and Art by creating several new watches to enrich the Swatch CreArt Collection.

New York City based ‘Urban Primitivist’ Billy The Artist; noted painter, sculptor and writer Ted Scapa; the prolific graphic artist and designer Matthew Langille, and French street painter and rapper Grems have together created a total of twelve new works for ‘the world’s smallest canvas’. The artists and their remarkable creations are presented below.

Billy the Artist

Billy the Artist believes in creating his own reality, and his work is delightful evidence of his success in doing so. Billy captures the energy and power of the city around him in what he calls «Urban Primitive» reality – a kaleidoscope of puzzle-like images that celebrate the diversity and joy of the human spirit. His bold, distinctive style moves easily from art galleries to commercial venues and from small-scale projects to enormous urban murals. Everywhere he goes, Billy turns the world upside down: while others turn reality into art, Billy makes art a reality.

Ted Scapa

Ted Scapa has spent a lifetime playing with paint and creative ideas. Born in Holland, he has adopted Switzerland as his home country since 1962. As an artist he has been writing, making and editing books about art for 35 years, he has also been working as a painter, sculptor and designer of art objects ranging from rugs to lamps. The four watches Ted has created for Swatch testify to his love of colour and creative endeavour. Swatch shares his enthusiasms and is happy to celebrate the playfulness at the heart of Ted Scapa’s art.

Matthew Langille

Matthew Langille is a prolific young artist based in New York City, where he puts his boundless creative energy to work for global fashion houses and design firms. He studied glass-blowing as a child, art installation in France, and ceramics and life drawing in the United States before turning to print-making and drawing in college. His clever, witty imagery exhibits a distinctively light-hearted style that sets him apart from the crowd. Matthew continues to develop as an artist while creating images, graphic and text designs, patterns and crayon drawings in the ever-changing space where art and fashion meet.

Grems

Grems is a young French street painter, rapper, hip hop artist and designer. A man of many colours and voices, his art is provocative, creative, trendy and fashionable. His artistic signature features colourful clusters of hand-drawn signs and lettering, labels, bold graphics and graffiti. A rebel with a cause, Grems takes street painting to a higher level, expanding his canvases from walls to subways, showroom windows and branded fashion gear. His cartoon figures slide through the streets with style and grace, transforming public space into open air galleries and street art into joie de vivre.