OSGEMEOS – The Letters Behind the Name
OSGEMEOS are known around the world for their yellow figures, but their story also lives in the letters. Gustavo and Otávio Pandolfo came out of São Paulo’s hip-hop culture as graffiti writers. Tags, throw-ups and pieces were never a preliminary stage to leave behind. They remain a distinct part of the twins’ practice—and a way to understand how the name OSGEMEOS became recognisable.
Learning to write in São Paulo
The brothers began painting in the late 1980s, learning together as graffiti’s international language reached São Paulo through books, films and encounters with other writers. In a 2010 interview, they recalled Barry McGee, known as TWIST, showing them Style Wars and explaining tags, throw-ups and fat caps. Those exchanges helped connect what they were seeing in photographs and on screen to the practical language of the street.
Their early letters drew on traditional wildstyle. Over time, they mixed influences and changed the structure of their name. The ambition was to build a style that could be recognised as theirs, even as the forms evolved.
Letters with character
OSGEMEOS talk about letters as expressive forms. In that 2010 interview, they explained that an E could carry balance while an S might look happy or aggressive. The point is revealing: for them, style does not sit on top of a word. It is built into each letter’s shape, weight and relationship to the next.
They also described a lasting affection for handstyles, bombing and throw-ups. Their preference in this part of the work was often direct: fewer colours, a restrained background and enough space for the letters to carry the composition. A simple piece still has to solve difficult questions of proportion, connection and flow.
Two writers, one name
OSGEMEOS is a shared signature. The brothers have described a process in which they develop ideas together, sometimes dividing tasks and sometimes painting the same work side by side. As Otávio put it in an interview with EL PAÍS, there are moments when both have an idea and both paint together. They recalled sharing a single sheet of paper when they were children.
That collaboration gives their graffiti name a particular force. A piece reads as one identity, although two writers may have developed and painted it. The result is neither a fixed division of labour nor two separate signatures placed next to each other. It is a shared visual language built through years of working together.
Colour and recognition
Yellow is closely associated with OSGEMEOS, especially their figures, but their work is not limited to one colour. In an interview with UOL, the brothers explained that they wanted people to recognise their work at a glance through both line and colour. Yellow became part of that identity.
For a writer, recognition is never only a matter of spelling the name. Colour, outline, placement and repeated letter decisions can make a piece legible as yours before a viewer has read every character. OSGEMEOS developed that recognisability across both their writing and their figurative work.
The street and the museum
The twins have distinguished their graffiti from their exhibition practice. In 2010, they said their letter styles belonged on the street, while characters, stories and installations were central to how they entered galleries. In a later interview with HIDDEN CHAMPION, they described graffiti in terms of tagging and bombing on streets and trains, and compared lettering to architecture: a structure with style, beauty and a message.
Those statements do not reduce OSGEMEOS to either writers or museum artists. They show why the two practices should be looked at closely on their own terms. The yellow characters may be the first thing many people remember. Follow the tags, throw-ups and pieces, and another history comes into view: two writers building one name, letter by letter.