Jorit

Jorit was born in Naples of mixed descent, his father, Luigi Cerullo,[2] being a Neapolitan, his mother Jeannina,[3] Dutch. He grew up in Quarto, on the northern perimeter of the city. After studying at the scientific lyceum Galileo Galilei in Naples, he attended the Neapolitan Academy of Fine Arts,[4] obtaining a first class degree.[5]

His interest in street art was sparked off when he was 13 years old. Jorit has defined his approach as one of picking out ordinary faces from the working class to embody famous people, in the style of Caravaggio. Thus, his depiction at Forcella, Naples of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, draws on features of a 35-year-old friend who is a factory worker.[6]

In August 2019, Jorit paints the face of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, on the facade of a twenty-story building in the district of Odintsovo, Russia. At the base of the mural is the acronym "СССР", Cyrillic abbreviation, transliterated SSSR, which stands for Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик), in English: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).[7][8][9][10] It is the largest portrait of Gagarin in the world.[11]

Ahed Tamimi by Jorit and others, Bethlehem

Jorit was put into detention and detained three days after painting a mural depicting a Palestinian adolescent activist, Ahed Tamimi, who had become an iconic figure among Palestinians after slapping the face of an Israeli soldier outside her home in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih. The mural – whose completion was scheduled to coincide with Tamimi's release from an 8-month prison sentence – was set on the Bethlehem side of Israel's Separation Barrier.[12][13] On arriving back in Naples on 30 July, his family, awaiting him at the airport, asked that no photos be taken, since he wished to retain his anonymity.[14]