By 1975, the East New York region became unstable with racial tensions and social conflicts, including the prominence of gangs.

Anxious to leave high school behind, he earned his GED in 1984, took a job in a government office, and began to indulge his interest in graffiti.

[5]: 8  Using his nickname as a tag was considered risky at the time because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the New York Police Department (NYPD) were attempting to crack down on graffiti writers.

He was the first graffiti artist to have a one-man show in the Netherlands and Germany, and his work is collected by European museums.

[10] As attested by newspapers and magazines of the early 1980s, like People magazine [11] he worked with the Fun Gallery and together with artists of the like of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lee Quiñones, Keith Haring, ERO (Dominique Philbert), Rammellzee, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000, Toxic, Zephyr,[9] and others, he brought Graffiti art from the streets to art galleries, and museums of the United States, Europe, and Japan.

[citation needed] Dondi was featured on a Converse shoe as part of the Product Red project (2007)[14] as well as on a capsule clothing line by Kool Sugar Apparel that was to be available in 2016.

[16] In January 2018 on an Artnet auction, a 1984 Dondi painting, titled Solid Formation, estimated between $50,000 and $70,000 USDm sold for US$240,000.