Pure Evil

Chantal GOYA

2023

Charles Uzzell-Edwards is the real name of the man behind the Pure Evil pseudonym. Born in South Wales in 1968 and son of the abstract painter John Uzzell-Edwards, art and creativity have always been around in his life.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Pure Evil left the United Kingdom to live in the United States for a few years, specifically in San Francisco. Influenced by the American West Coast's trends of the moment, he began to develop a deeper interest in the urban cultures of skateboarding, graffiti and electronic music. By then, Pure Evil began working for the clothing brand Anarchic Adjustment, taking the first steps into the world of graphic design and stencil art.

As a multitalented artist who became very involved in the electronic music scene, Pure Evil left San Francisco to spend four years in Berlin where he worked for a music production company named FAX. During this time, he missed London very much and decided to go back there.

Once settled back in the English capital, the first Pure Evil graffiti is seen on the streets. The artist met the people involved with Banksy's Project Santa's Ghetto, and his work begins to have a darker look. Pure Evil then produced his first prints with Pictures on Walls (POW).

Pure Evil has been traveling all around the world, hosting exhibitions in countries like China, Brazil and Russia as well as in all of Europe. Success during these times has been such that it has allowed him to open in 2007 his own art gallery in London's Shoreditch neighborhood. In the gallery, Pure Evil shows his own work as well as that of other artists, and there he finds his space for artistic creativity, both in visual arts and music.

In May of 2012 Pure Evil joined the BBC's TV show The Apprentice and his popularity skyrocketed. Additionally, given the success achieved with his last series, "Nightmares," we can tell that he is an artist of international importance with a very promising career ahead.

With the Pure Evil moniker, the artist explores what he calls his "darkest side." Raised in a Catholic environment where good and evil are two concepts linked to each other, he looks to his critical sensibility to examine the most diabolical side of society and of a world filled with wars and hunger that doesn't seem to have an end.

Browse a collection of Pure Evil original art on 1stDibs.