Since 1978, New York painter and street art pioneer Dan Witz has been creating self-authorized, illegal, anonymous interventions on the street, here a Dada-inspired poem: “I hammered about 50 words into the asphalt of Broadway.” Back in 1983 he published The Birds of Manhattan, an early street art photo book of his series with the same name.

Photos: Dan Witz.

This perhaps earliest documented punk stencil was an illegal guerrilla advertising. Punk's often visually crude DIY culture influenced much later street art.

Photo: © GODLIS.

The philosopher, experimental musician and artist Henry Flynt photographed the majority of the SAMO_© graffiti known today. No Basquiat museum retrospective or street art history is complete without them.

Photo: #26, Henry Flynt.

Years before Blek, Vallauri initiated a stencil graffiti movement in São Paulo. Before his early death from AIDS, he influenced early stencil street art in the USA, Poland and France. He is considered Brazil's graffiti godfather, had museum retrospectives and is cited as a forerunner by the Brazilian street art stars Os Gêmeos (*1974). The anniversary of his death is the day of graffiti in Brazil.

Photo: Alex Vallauri/ CEMIS SP /Claudia Vallauri.

The British Gee Voucher (*1945) photographed the rough, military-looking stencil font of this feminist graffiti before she designed the covers for Crass, making a similar font a Crass trademark.

Photo: Gee Voucher.