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You cannot walk around Philly without seeing El Toro’s work and legacy — a friendly yet mischievous cartoon buffalo on the back of a street sign, lamp post or brick wall. The artist, born Justin Nagtalon, who helped elevate sticker art in Philadelphia into a popular and respected medium, died earlier this month on March 7. He was 43 years old.
“I’ve been describing him as a male Hello Kitty,” Nagtalon told WHYY’s Art Outside series in 2023, “which is also cute in kawaii, but also has a little mischievous side to him, a little bit of vandalism side — you know, make it a little saucy.”
“He’s Philly’s street mascot,” said street artist Sean 9 Lugo. “The city lost a legend, and I can only speak for myself, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people could agree that this one hurts.”
In Philadelphia, there are many city signs reminding you of rules and their consequences: “don’t turn here,” “one way street,” “don’t park here,” ”$300 towing fee.” El Toro looked at the back of these signs as a blank canvas — an opportunity for art that pushes against orders and brings fun and levity to the mundane.
Nagtalon began creating El Toro stickers and putting them up around Philadelphia in the early 2000s — back when sticker art was thought of as an illegitimate and taboo medium. He and artist Bob Will Reign are widely credited as two of the city’s first sticker artists, helping launch the scene.
“We both sprinted off the starting line around 2003 together as Bob and Toro. We started as just accomplices, but eventually we became friends and family,” Bob Will Reign wrote on Instagram. “He was a brother to me. We were always pulling and pushing each other through the years to create and make art.”
The two were part of the 33 crew — a collective of early Philadelphia sticker artists that included Ticky 33, Underwater Pirates, Noségo and others in their orbit.
Over and over and over again, Nagtalon created different versions of El Toro — drawing stickers and establishing the character as a regular presence in the city.
Sketches by El Toro, aka Justin Nagtalon in February 2026. (Via @eltoro215)
“Think about a big picture — imagining an artist sitting in their studio, hand drawing hundreds of works of art to then deliver to the public in these otherwise empty spaces,” said Conrad Benner, founder and editor of Streets Dept. “It’s just a really beautiful way to make art in the public space… and that character lived in many ways.”
While most artists hope to gain recognition for their own creative ideas and style, Nagtalon had a larger goal. He was someone who wanted to bring success and attention to his community.
“He was a teacher,” street artist Doomed Future said. “He taught a lot of people how to hone in on their character and design them better. He really cared about what everybody was doing… he really lived his character… He was his character.”
(Courtesy of Doomed Future)
Sticker artist Jen, aka Ticky 33, remembers the first time that she met El Toro at one of his early shows. Back then, the bullish character was drawn to be cruder, bulkier and more intimidating.
“I was terrified,” Ticky 33 said. “I’m like, ‘Toro is going to be this massive dude. He’s gonna bite into our heads and throw us across the street — he’s huge. I’m so scared. What if he hits us? What if he kills us?”
Her worries turned out to be unnecessary.
“You get there and you meet Justin and you’re just like, ‘Oh my god… the character he drew, it wasn’t about his personality being big and overbearing, or anything like that. It was more about the size of his heart. He’s just the most welcoming, friendly and encouraging person on the planet.”
Artist Ticky 33’s new tattoo honoring El Toro. (Courtesy of Jen, Ticky 33)
Over time, Nagtalon’s character slowly became softer, more cartoonish, playful and inviting — just like him.
“He’s taken a lot of evolutions from the 20 years I’ve been doing him and then creating. I think he just grows up with me, basically,” Nagtalon told WHYY in 2023.
An artist from the beginning
Nagtalon was born in the Philippines on January 10, 1983 and lived in Quezon City until the age of 10. His mother was a pediatric nurse and his father worked for the government’s Bureau of Fisheries. He was a middle child and had two siblings, with a six year age gap between each kid.
“We were just always outside,” said Jamille Nagtalon-Ramos, Nagtalon’s older sister. “And the Philippines is a tropical country… It’s either sunny or raining, that’s really it. But we were always outside — in the rain, in the sun.”
Justin Nagtalon and his mom in the Eagles helmet-mobile during game day as a poster artist. (Via @eltoro215)
Nagtalon’s mother, Jennifer, was recruited to come to the United States and work in 1986 to help fill a nursing shortage. She made the tough decision to move to Paterson, New Jersey to support her children and husband from abroad. Nagtalon’s younger brother, Jethro David “JD” Venzon Nagtalon, is the only family member who was born in the U.S.
While it was hard to be separated, Jamille reflects fondly on the family’s years in the Philippines. She often took on the role of the third parent to Justin.
“The eldest daughter is definitely the protector and the one who provides,” she said. “And I took that to heart.”
Nagtalon once said that he often saw carabao (Filipino water buffalo) while growing up that inspired El Toro. From a young age, he had an affinity for art. He was always drawing, or stealing his sister’s markers. He enjoyed the freedom of his Filipino schooling, which encouraged a learn-through-play approach.
Roughly six years after Nagtalon’s mother moved to the United States, the whole family finally joined her in Paterson.
(Courtesy of Ticky 33)
Coming to America was a big transition for Nagtalon. The family arrived in winter in the middle of the school year — isolated from friends and relatives back home. All of a sudden, young El Toro was exposed to a new culture with different food, different weather and a different language. They had never owned a winter jacket or seen a lemon.
“He starts Catholic school here, and they’re wearing a uniform, and there’s all these restrictions,” Jamille explained. “We just were like, what is happening with our life?”
Even just figuring out how to exist within the family had its challenges.
“Navigating space and emotions and even just some kind of cognitive dissonance in being like, ‘Oh my God, we’re a family now again in the same proximal space,’ that also was a transition for us,” Jamille said.
Finding home in Philadelphia
Art was always a safe space for Nagtalon. According to his younger brother JD, Nagtalon’s rise as El Toro was an inevitability.
“He was always with a sketchbook and a pencil in hand,” he recalled. “He was always into anything comic book related — anything cartoons. Our shared love for cartoons is a big brotherly bonding experience for us. It was the Simpsons and ‘80s cartoons — Thundercats and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.”
“When I think of my older brother, he is Justin, but I also just think of him as El Toro because of how long he has been with the character,” he said. “I’ve known El Toro as Justin since I was like 10 or 11 years old.”
(Courtesy of Ticky 33)
Nagtalon studied at the Art Institute of Philadelphia for a degree in graphic design. According to family members, this is when he really got to explore the city.
“[He] always loved being in Philadelphia,” Jamille said. “[The city] became his adopted home, and he left Philly after art school to take a job in Florida for a hot minute, and then came back and really started establishing himself as an artist.”
By 2003, he was already out and creating El Toro, placing the character in different parts of the city and building community with other creatives. By 2006, he had his first show.
Ticky 33 reflects on how different the sticker art scene was back then.
“We had to work together,” she said. “We had to try every brand of marker, every brand of paper, every kind of sticker, to see how they held up in different weather. For the kids now, it’s great. I have no problem. I’m not trying to knock them, but there’s a couple of things I noticed now with Instagram and the way it’s so popular now and it’s so easily obtainable to get all of this knowledge that we had to really fight and work through and fail a lot to learn.”
Nagtalon also had a significant hand in shaping the bar, Tattooed Mom, into the street artist hub it is today.
“He stays in my heart and my mind so strongly, because he really was one of the first people, if not the first person, that I reached out to pre-Instagram,’” said Robert Perry, the co-founder and owner of Tattooed Mom.
Nagtalon not only helped the bar by bringing his own artwork into the space, but also by connecting Perry with other street artists and encouraging them to do the same.
“He was a super sweet guy, straight from the get-go, really down to earth, really just lovely and sweet and kind and creative,” Perry said. “From there, that just kind of ,over the years, blossomed into both a personal friendship and a professional one.”
“There would not be the vibrant street art scene that you see here today without somebody like Justin,” he said.
The “female El Toro”
El Toro died young, but according to friends and family he was also one of the lucky few to find his soul mate, Amanda Benson.
“The happiest that I’ve ever seen my brother, other than drawing, was with his wife, Amanda,” JD said. “I remember meeting them for the first time, and the biggest smile on his face introducing Amanda to the family and everything. If he wasn’t creating art, he was spending time creating memories with his wife.”
Benson is a graphic designer and artist. The pair met in 2007.
Justin Nagtalon and his wife Amanda Benson. (Courtesy of Elizabeth Hunt)
“Justin is the kindest, most loving and creative person I’ve ever met,” Benson said, adding that the first thing that drew her to Nagtalon was his smile. “I just had a comfortability with him that I don’t think I’ve ever had with anyone else. Right off the bat, we have a ton in common — art-wise, we have very similar tastes.”
Ticky 33 noted that looking back, she’s realized just how much El Toro’s relationship with Benson has shown up in his work.
“If you look at the more recent designs and prints that Justin was making of El Toro, there’s a female El Toro involved,” she said. “And he’s got a lot of videos on his Instagram where he’ll talk about his prints and what they’re based on. And I didn’t even realize it until a couple weeks ago that they’re based on events that he and Amanda shared together.”
(Courtesy of Amanda Benson)
Benson and Nagtalon married at the Valley Green Inn in the Wissahickon in 2012. The couple loved traveling. After their wedding, they took a road trip to the West Coast — where they spent the next eight years, until the COVID pandemic and time to reflect brought the two back to Philadelphia.
“We worked our way back across the country to Philadelphia,” Benson said. “I think all of the things that we had looked for out there, we had fulfilled in many ways… We just missed Philly. Los Angeles had never felt quite like home. And even though neither of us are from Philadelphia originally — we grew up elsewhere — we found a shared, chosen home here.”
“I’m no longer afraid of who I am”
Nagtalon made the decision to start letting the public know more about his identity after his move back to Philadelphia.
“I have nieces and nephews that, they know I do [street art], and being unknown versus known is so different,” Nagtalon told WHYY. “I want you to be proud of me… We’re going to celebrate this. I’m no longer afraid of who I am. And I think it’s such a big leap to connect and also to understand my art more. I think that, you know, bridging that gap before wasn’t important, but now it is, and I think I have a lot more things to say because of it.”
According to Benson, the change was gradual and nuanced over time. While El Toro’s work is lauded, much of it is also illegal. Coming forward, especially as an immigrant and a person of color, is not a decision to take lightly.
Still, he realized there were certain accomplishments he would not be able to achieve if he remained completely anonymous. Living in Los Angeles and witnessing international artists during their travels exposed Nagtalon to a different perspective.
“Being so comfortable in Philadelphia and having such support here really helped him to lean in more heavily to trusting that he would be accepted the way he wanted to be,” Benson said, “and that he would be able to share his work even to a wider audience than he had already done.”
(Courtesy of Sean 9 Lugo)
Certainly, the city has embraced not just El Toro, but Justin. In the last five years of his life, Nagtalon was commissioned to create dream projects. In 2023, he created a large public mural with Mural Arts. Not only did he talk with WHYY’s Art Outside podcast series, but he created the cover art for it. Last year, the Philadelphia Eagles commissioned him to create artwork and one of their official game day posters.
What’s more, coming out about his identity gave him the chance to work more closely with Philly’s Filipino community. He worked with the Asian Arts Initiative and created artwork for restaurants like Manong, Baby’s Kusina + Market and Tabachoy.
An artist gone too soon
Nagtalon’s death was sudden and unexpected.
“This is the last conversation I’d be expecting to have with you right now,” Benson told BP.
Nagtalon passed away from a heart attack. His father had died from the same illness at around the same age.
“You hear about cardiovascular risk in the African American population, but [Filipinos] also have a very high risk, similar,” his sister Jamille said.
Jamille is an assistant professor at Rutgers University School of Nursing and a women’s health nurse practitioner at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Pennsylvania Hospital. Part of her research includes working with the Filipino community.
“Cardiovascular disease is a problem in the Filipino community,” she said, noting that her father-in-law also passed away from a heart attack.
“It’s very tragic, but also I’m more motivated than ever to continue my research and be able to better inform our community in terms of lowering our risk for cardiovascular disease,” she said. “That’s just the most tragic thing for him to be 43 and dying of a heart attack and not even being able to outlive my dad, who died very young at 44.”
El Toro created artwork, featuring a happy rainbow and sun, for WHYY’s Art Outside podcast with Conrad Benner.
“Every day, I see a new tribute to him”
The loss of El Toro has left a giant hole in Philadelphia’s street art community.
“I can’t even put into words what a supportive, encouraging dude he is,” Ticky 33 said. “He encouraged us to do art shows, projects, coloring books, T-shirts, sticker prints, anything. If there was any kind of event involving our characters together, it only happened because Justin curated it… It wasn’t like he was running to the finish line without you, he was dragging you along with him.”
“We lost an amazing human,” Lugo said. “If he was a dope creative and an asshole, this would have been easy. He was such a good dude… Philly will move on, just like anything, but it won’t be the same without him.”
Over the past two weeks, street artists around the city have been overflowing with creativity and grief, putting together tributes to El Toro.
El Toro around town, RIP
(Photo by @twistedphilly)
“With the news of his passing, every day I see a new tribute to him, somebody taking their own art and paying tribute to him, or taking his character and mixing it with their style or their character,” Perry said. “I haven’t really seen something like this before, personally, where this community is just reacting with their love and respect and grief for his passing and shining it back to the world.”
Although Nagtalon is gone, El Toro and his presence is still all over Philadelphia. His stickers are there, winking at you — letting you know he’s made his mark. He’s there, even in the work he didn’t personally create.
“If you look at sticker art now, there’s a lot of amazing artists out there, but when you look at the characters, you can pretty much see that almost every character that has come out after, say, 2015 is basically Bob, Toro, Underwater Pirates and Ticky rolled into one,” Ticky 33 said. “You’ve got the eyes, you’ve got the teeth, you’ve got the open mouth with the tongues hanging out. You’ve got the horns, the arms, the robots. We started that.”
Justin Nagtalon during Eagles game day as a poster artist. (Via @eltoro215)
Tattooed Mom is planning to hold a community gathering celebrating El Toro’s life. Perry is still in the early stages of planning but you can follow the bar’s Instagram page for updates. There is also a Meal Train set up for anyone who would like to support Benson.
“I think that Philadelphia will feel this — this void — with him being gone.” Perry said. “But I also am so encouraged by the outpouring of love that I’ve seen and the outpouring of support and kindness that I’ve seen from that community, not just in Philadelphia, but all over the world.”
Benson said El Toro spent the last weeks of his life hard at work doing what he loved — creating joy and art.
“He’s been getting up earlier and earlier, because we both find the early morning hours to be super productive,” she said. “Something was telling me these last few weeks to just go get my tea and let him just work… I always want to pop my head in and say hi, but was trying to give him his space and his time, because he just felt like he had so much he wanted to share, and it never stopped.”
“And, I just keep coming back to his work, because you can’t look at it and not smile — it’s impossible, and it’s just so beautiful, and he is so beautiful. I miss him so much.”
(Photo by Landon Wise)