You can’t be invited to this. You walk in and see it.

When we leave, the painting’s gone, like we were never there.

– Fernando Miteff

Nic 707 figures prominently in the history of the New York graffiti movement which began to flourish in the early 1970’s.  Born in Argentina as Fernando Pablo Miteff, he is the son of the famed Argentinian Heavyweight boxer, Pablo Alexis Miteff. 

Fernando was raised in The Bronx, where he became part of the City’s radical and youth-driven urban art explosion.  Inspired by the bold antics and ubiquitous works of artists like Phase 2 and Checker 170, he began as a “tagger” under the names of Stine 169 and Tuc 2. 

Fernando adopted Nic 707 in 1974 to experiment with combining the “Styles” of earlier artists he admired as well as his creating own unique styles.  Nic 707’s work soon became a common site throughout New York’s IRT and IND subway lines.

Nic 707 is an early “Style Master,” a rare title of merit that acknowledges exceptional creativity, refined artistic talent and the willingness to share techniques with other artists.  Nic 707 is one of the last surviving links between the 1st generation of Style Masters and the 2nd generation, exemplified by Chain 3, Kool 131 and Kase 2. 

Nic 707’s enduring influence on the world of graffiti includes the mentoring of up and coming artists and noteworthy collaborations with many of the field’s celebrated luminaries.  Of particular note is the success of Nic 707’s protege, Noc 167 (Melvin Samuels, Jr.), who is considered one of graffiti’s legendary talents. 

Nic 707 also founded the renowned OTB (“Out to Bomb” or “Only the Best”) graffiti crew and was its first president.  Today, OTB boasts an active membership of thousands of dedicated artists worldwide.

Turning a Subway Car Into a Gallery, Until the Last Stop

By David Gonzalez for The New York Times March 1, 2015.

Fernando Miteff was inside an empty subway car waiting for the go-ahead from a friend who stood sentry by an open door, scanning the platform for conductors, police officers or anyone else who might disrupt his plan.

“O.K.,” his friend said. “They’re not looking.”

Like a graffiti version of “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” Mr. Miteff and two friends sprang into action. After pulling painted plastic squares from a portfolio case and sliding them into empty advertising frames inside the car, they had transformed the unadorned silver interior into a rolling gallery featuring classic graffiti tags, bold warriors and colorful portraits.

This is not a new situation for Mr. Miteff, who was known as Nic 707 during the graffiti scene of the 1970s. He hasn’t written on walls (except in his apartment) in decades. He calls his guerrilla graffiti experience InstaFame Phantom Art, a fleeting show that stays up until the subway reaches the end of the line, when the pieces, Mr. Miteff and his collaborators vanish.

“I wanted to bring a new ideology to graffiti,” he said inside his tiny Bronx apartment, which doubles as his studio. “I didn’t want to leave a mark that stays. I wanted to leave an impression. As long as you saw it and remembered it, I’m happy with that.”

It would be hard to forget some of the names that grace his pieces. Among them are contemporaries like KingBee, whose murals can be found from New York to Miami, and pioneers like Taki 183, widely considered the first graffitist to capture the public’s imagination in 1971.

Mr. Miteff, 55, had once prided himself on being a style master. But one summer, his mother tossed out his spray cans, markers and black books. He turned away from graffiti. For a while, his life hit bottom. He bounced back and tried a number of jobs from limo driver to stand-up comic.

He was out of the game for decades, until a conversation in 2009.

“My friend asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’ I said, ‘Of course,’ ” he recalled. “He told me to be serious for one moment a day for 30 days. Every morning ask God a simple question: Can you please give me the information I’m seeking?”

It sounded wild. He was in.

A few days after he started his new routine, he talked with a man selling comic books on Burnside Avenue, not far from his apartment. He told the vendor his sign was terrible. He made a new sign for him, free. A few days later, the vendor’s table was getting soaked by rain. Mr. Miteff offered to find a solution. He came back with some plastic squares he had plucked from the trash at a subway station. The vendor was happy. As Mr. Miteff left, the vendor shouted after him.

“You do graffiti?” the vendor asked. “Why don’t you paint those?”

He went back to his apartment and started painting, creating Pollock-like backgrounds he would then adorn with his tag or a drawing reminiscent of Kilroy, the figure made famous by G.I.s during World War II. A friend stopped by his apartment and was impressed.

“I know what you’re going to do with those,” his friend said. “You’re going to put them on the train!”

That was it.

“The information came to me,” Mr. Miteff said. “Right then I knew: Put them up in the train where the ads go.”

He continued to paint backgrounds, inviting others to add designs. His collaborators include Praxis, a Colombian graffitist; Michael Cuomo, a Yonkers painter and sculptor; and Cornbread, the renowned graffitist from Philadelphia.

He now has more than 300 pieces, which he has put on temporary display on trains, buses and benches. With equal amounts of enthusiasm and humor, he keeps his outlook positive, refusing to bash the ads that now often cover entire trains the way old-school graffiti once did.

“Nic’s got a vision, a pure artist’s vision, so I want to support the guy,” Taki said. “The subways are clean and shiny, so he’s putting in color to make it look alive. It’s compartmentalized; it fits into a frame. It’s artsy. Why didn’t somebody think of this before?”

With hundreds of one-of-a-kind panels that would be the envy of any urban gallery, Mr. Miteff plans to mount an exhibit. Having gotten the information he needed, he is looking ahead, rather than lamenting the 27 years he did not create graffiti. He knows everything is fleeting, so he is savoring the present.

“It’s a magical moment when you walk into a train and suddenly it’s transformed into a mini art show, then it’s gone,” he said.

“You can’t be invited to this. You walk in and see it. When we leave, the painting’s gone, like we were never there.”

Like We Were Never There, I Think Not.

Fernando Miteff liked his art so much, he gave it away.

Using the graffiti tag Nic 707, he was known for giving scraps of paper adorned with his graceful letter designs and outlines to up-and-coming artists to guide them, and to fans to thank them. And for the last decade he did something most straphangers thought had vanished in the late 1980s: He brought graffiti back to the subway.

But this time, he did it by boarding a train, replacing ads with pieces by some of the country’s best-known and most influential graffiti artists, like Taki 183, and switching them back at the end of his ride.

“I wanted to bring a new ideology to graffiti,” he said in a 2015 interview about his guerrilla subway car exhibits, which he called InstaFame Phantom Art. “I didn’t want to leave a mark that stays. I wanted to leave an impression. As long as you saw and remembered it, I’m happy with that.”

Mr. Miteff died on April 12 at his home in the Bronx. He was 60. The cause was complications of Covid-19, said his younger brother Karim, who managed his archives and was writing a book about Mr. Miteff’s graffiti career.

In a culture known for egos and arguments, Mr. Miteff prided himself on sharing his love of the art.

“He was always giving, giving and giving,” Karim Miteff recalled of his brother’s early years. “He’d sit at McDonald’s doodling on napkins and pass it out. He would be more apt to give away his work than to sell it.”

Mr. Miteff was born in Buenos Aires to Diana and Alexis Pablo Miteff, a professional boxer who once fought Muhammad Ali and worked as a television production manager after retiring. His parents had been spending a year in Argentina before returning to New York.

Karim said his brother was raised in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, where he started tagging at 12 after discovering a can of spray paint in his home’s basement. He later founded the Out to Bomb crew, a loose-knit group of collaborators, and influenced younger artists like Serve and his protégé, NOC167, who went on to fame.

Though he spent much of his adult life working odd jobs, including chauffeur and standup comic, he returned to the subways in 2009 after he and a friend had a brainstorm; it led to his InstaFame project. His easy personality and sense of humor helped him persuade collaborators — from established to up-and-coming ones — even to paint pieces on the sidewalk outside art openings.

“He was a funny dude, but he took a lot of people under his wing,” said Eric Felisbret, author of “Graffiti New York,” a survey of the city’s graffiti history. “He was completely into graffiti for the love of it. All those panels he did, he could have only written NIC and that would put him in the spotlight. Instead, he put his love for the art in the spotlight.”