Born in 1967, Marcus Kuhn got his first tattoo at the age of 16 by Thom de Vita, a leading figure of the American underground tattoo, in his apartment on the Lower East Side, during a period when tattooing was still officially banned in New York.
Fascinated by this environment and its art, he went to his first convention in 1986 in New Orleans, where he met the young Filip Leu. Very impressed with his style, Marcus Khun decides in the late 80s to start an apprenticeship with Jonathan Shaw at Fun City in New York.
At that time it was the only legal street shop in the city and Marcus Khun experiments with the old school American style while focusing on traditional Japanese tattooing. He opens a first shop in New York and also runs a tattoo machine company; the two activities are very successful, but Marcus Kuhn is soon back on the road, and will during more than 10 years act as an itinerant tattoo artist worldwide. He worked with the best tattoo artists in Osaka and Yokohama, settled temporarily in Sydney, Buenos Aires, Paris, London, Los Angeles while keeping New York as his regular mooring point.
In 2011, based in Brooklyn, he began a series of documentaries on the tattoo, “The Gypsy Gentleman“, the name that was given to him during his years of travel; the first episode follows him in New York alongside Thomas Hooper and Virginia Elwood. Six episodes will follow, broadcast on the web. Today, after 30 years of experience in tattooing, he opened his shop Just Good Tattoos in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
His works, whether tattoos or paintings, on which he is also very productive, are characterized by strong compositions and a great chromatic richness, bidding different styles inspired by his travels. He draws from and reinterprets the traditional tattoo designs from Hindu, Tibetan, old school American and Japanese from the beginning of the Edo period. These multiple influences unfold in black and elegant outlines, suggestive of Fine Line, another style appreciated by the tattoo artist. Very busy, he is regularly invited as a guest in shops worldwide.