July 14th, 2009 by admin

Visual artist Dash Snow who became notorious for his graffiti around New York City died today from a drug overdose aged 27. Dash is the latest in a string of nearly 40 significant artist deaths at 27 over the last century. Other famous 27s include Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and members of the Grateful Dead, Big Star, Badfinger, the Stooges, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Manic Street Preachers, and The Mars Volta.

Dash Snow’s death was confirmed earlier today by his grandmother, Christophe de Menil, an art collector and philanthropist.

He was a hard-living soul who will was already an underground legend thanks to his muse-like status in photographer Colen McGinley’s drug addled and intimate work.

Dash often made collages that he assembled from found images and also used video and his own photography in exhibitions in NYC, Los Angeles, and London.

New York Magazine ran a feature about Dash and his crew titled “Warhol’s Children” January 7, 2007.

In 1988 Jean-Michel Basqiuat, modern art’s graffiti genius (and friend of Andy Warhol), died from a drug overdose aged 27 as well.

Samadhi Creations’ award-winning non-fiction graphic novel “The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll,” which was published to great acclaim earlier this year, retells the history of rock & roll seen through the lives and legacies of the three-dozen musicians who each died at the age of 27.