Filip Leu

​This unprecedented, encyclopedic volume spans the 40-year career of the Swiss master: with over 600 pages, over 1000 tattoos and thousands of photographs, it tells the story of an amazing artist, globally considered the greatest innovator of contemporary Oriental tattoo style.

We can say that Filip Leu’s life, tattooing, and art have flowed along at the same pace over the forty-year tattooist’ career that’s covered in this volume: one aspect influences another, thus revealing the reflection of a major personality.

He is the person who created the stylistic details that are commonly used today: for example, the way he creates a dragon, waves, or water, and the large-format backgrounds he provides for his subjects – skulls in particular – along with numerous studies of eyeballs and dragon claws. This book is a catalogue raisonné of the art of the great master: it is organized chronologically, following his brilliant creativity for decades. The three threads of life-tattoo-art weave together throughout the four decades covered in the volume: 2020-2010 / 2010-2000 / 2000-1990 / 1990-birth. It aims to build tattoo culture and awareness, but most of all to serve as a study compendium for any tattooist who truly wants to see, understand and study contemporary tattooing from the technical standpoint, through one of its greatest artists.