Domenico Frode
Illustrator for When I Touch The Stars

Writer since 1993, Artist, Lawyer. To date, he is the only known author in the Writing and Urban art panorama in general to carry out the profession of lawyer at the same time, centered among other things on the defense of writers and street artists in the judicial field.

 

Frode was born in the Barona area of ​​Milan, where he began his career in lettering when he was still a teenager in 1993. The stylistic evolution is concentrated at first only on the street, and then later leads to more expressive and communicative levels.

 

Although he enrolled in law and cultivated an authentic passion for justice, he did not give up writing and the evolution of his own style day after day. Years pass and Frode is unable to free himself from any of his opposing natures, becoming the very embodiment of two partly antithetical worlds. Only a few days before graduating, he is caught red-handed while painting on an unauthorized wall and so he is investigated for the crime of soiling pursuant to Article 639 of the Criminal Code. The lawyer assigned to him, fascinated by his walls and having learned that he is close to graduation, offers him to work in his firm.

 

Frode thus comes into contact with the Criminal Law and is immediately passionate about it. He began his forensic practice and deepened his studies by enrolling in the two-year graduate school, where he graduated in 2009.

 

The intense days between the study of law and the court hearings do not prevent him from cultivating his great passion for the street and for spontaneous and unsolicited art. The press begins to take an interest in his story. “Lawyer by day and writer by night” is the first article of Repubblica in 2010 with which Frode comes out in part in the open. In the same year an MTV short film entitled “Outlaw: the story of Frode”, focused on his days, brings to light the unprecedented union.

 

A path that despite everything will lead him to become indisputably the best known defender of writers and street artists in the Italian courtrooms .

 

Despite his study commitments, thanks to a highly distinctive trait and a recognizable style, he begins to collaborate with global names in fashion and design, such as Armani, Kartell, Karim Rashid, Nike, and numerous other brands. Equally numerous collaborations with authors and artists in international ca, po, he is the first Italian artist to paint at the famous Upfest festival in Bristol in 2012, where he obtains the public appreciation of John Nation, former discoverer and first curator of the famous Banksy.

 

He paints and produces numerous artistic projects of social connotation, for public institutions on the Italian territory, foundations, public and private bodies. Among the many are remembered the doors made on the Castle of Forlimpopoli for the Artusiana festival (2011), the first square in Italy dedicated to Partisan Women (2013, 2019), the facade of the Redemptorist Church of San Sperate (Cagliari 2014), the facade for the Enzo Jannacci reception house (2015), the internal courtyards of the C. Beccaria Penitentiary Institute (2014), the ancient walkway of Terzigno-Pompei (2017), the first work of street art for a Museum of Sacred Art in Italy at the entrance of the Pinacoteca Museo di Sant’Egidio, in Taranto (2018), with the artist Giuseppe Siniscalchi)

 

Since 2012 he has been able to fully bring his vision as a writer into the courtrooms, obtaining the acceptance of a defensive approach that from the first acquittal on the merits in Italy of 2 writers accused of soiling, will later lead him also in 2014 to obtain the first sentence in Italy to acquit a street artist on the merits (Manu Invisible); in 2015 the first acquittal of a writer on an unauthorized Hall of Fame.

 

His defenses resulted in a series of significant victories in the courtrooms, contributing to the birth of a new branch in Jurisprudence in favor of Street Art and Writing. In 2016 he arrives at the Supreme Court of Cassation, obtaining the final acquittal of the street artist Manu Invisible, who becomes the first Italian precedent in the matter. The first lawyer to bring the issue of Street Law and the right of expression of street authors into the Italian public debate, he opensand leads his law firm to Milan, specializing in the specific legal treatment of every aspect relating to Writing, Street Art, Urban Art, Public Art. It is a reference point for well-known realities in the street art sector at an international level in the intermediation and resolution of disputes of international law legal for the management, transmission, exhibition, acquisition of works in the world of contemporary art.

 

In 2019 he wrote and proposed a bill, which he presented to the Chamber of Deputies of Rome, for the de-listing of the crime of soiling provided for by article 639 of the Criminal Code, which punishes writers and street artists.

 

He actively collaborates with European universities and at various international levels in projects linked to the production, study, protection and enhancement of Street art. Member of the Law, Art and Literature Commission of the Milan Bar Association, he organized the first conference on Street Art Law at the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan in 2017.

 

He writes scientific articles on law on Street Art and has published in various magazines and newspapers, including La Repubblica, The magazine of the Milan Bar Association, Art & Law. His artistic works and legal contributions appear in numerous Italian and foreign publications, including “Upfest 1” and “Upfest 2”, by Tangent Book (London 2012, 2014), Street Art Banksy & co. By Bononia University Press, (Bologna 2016), Energy Box, by Skyra (Milan 2016), Maua catalog by Terre di Mezzo (2016), Praise to the Tag by A.Cegna, ed. Agenzia X (2018), Glorious, Whole Train Press (2020).

 

Since 2018 he is a member of the Law, Art and Literature Commission of the Milan Bar. From 2020 it is also part of the first university department of Law Study in the field of Street Art, at the Suor Orsola University of Naples.