The modern city dweller comes across the deterministic modern architecture that treats him as a passive user, unable to transform the space and its meaning. The big city urban environment contributes to the creation of ghettos, where the underground culture is born. In this frame, the passive/creative user dipole is constituted, on which the graffiti movement will be studied.

The term “creative user” describes the graffiti writer as a creative reader of the city and as an urban activist who manipulates and transforms public space through a series of semiotic mechanisms.

The term “creative loser” is used to describe the passage from the postmodern and angry graffiti of the 70’s to the constitution of a deconstructed metalanguage, which as a visual product, loses its dynamic in public, thus developing close ties with marketing and the media.

Studying the historical evolution of graffiti is essential to clarify the boundaries between the creative user and the urban loser. The objective of this research is to examine whether graffiti is a creative gesture that counteracts the contemporary dystopia.