José Parlá, Barclays Center Muralist José Parlá stood inside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, staring proudly at the giant mural he had painted, partly at the urging of Jay-Z. Stretching 70 feet long and 10 feet high, it has greeted countless visitors entering the arena, a cloudlike scroll of graffiti-esqe squiggles and personal inscriptions. "It's supposed to be a diary," Mr. Parlá, 39, said in a high-speed patter. He looked urban-arty in a fedora, double-breasted coat and leather high-tops. I hope people realize it's full of language. A closer look reveals words like "immigration," "Brooklyn Is," "Big Daddy Kane" and "Jay-Z." "I layered it all on there," Mr. Parlá said. The canvas is like a palimpsest. It's a fitting word that also describes Mr. Parlá"s layered past. A Cuban-American who is as comfortable painting on the street as in a studio, he follows in the tradition of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, street-oriented artists who cracked the high-stakes gallery market. But don't label him a street artist. "I've been fighting that term for years," said Mr. Parlá, who believes the phrase trivializes both graffiti art and those who draw inspiration from it. It's lazy. His canvases are anything but. Often large-format expressionistic paintings that blend graffiti-style brush strokes with blurred color fields, they have been shown at notable galleries like Haunch of Venison, in London; Ohwow, Los Angeles; and Yuka Tsuruno Gallery, in Tokyo. His works command upward of $125,000 each, and collectors have included Tom Ford and Agnès B., as well as Eric Clapton. "His work is a wonderful, ambitious cross between contemporary abstract expressionism and street art," said Bryce Wolkowitz, whose gallery in Chelsea represents Mr. Parlá in New York. He's worked many years to perfect his signature gestural style. The Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery is showing "The Wrinkles of the City," a series of photographs that document a 2012 collaboration in Havana between Mr. Parlá and the French artist JR. On display through July 12, the monumental-scaled project was created on decaying walls throughout Havana, marrying Mr. Parlá"s calligraphic style with JR's black-and-white photo-murals of Cuban elders. For Mr. Parlá, it was a homecoming of sorts. Born in Miami in 1973 to Cuban parents, he spent his teens obsessed with hip-hop and graffiti. "I was always break-dancing and writing on walls," he said. He attended the Savannah College of Art and Design on a scholastic art award, but left early in 1992 to help his family rebuild after Hurricane Andrew. He continued his studies at the New World School of Art, where a professor, Mel Alexenberg, encouraged his attempt to fuse graffiti with abstract expressionism. All the while, he continued to hone his graffiti wherever he could, including on several trips to New York, where he found a posse of fellow writers. "The police chased me once, and I ended up having to do community service," he said. That did not keep him away. The day after his father died in 1998, he moved to the Bronx. There, he painted alongside graffiti legends like Case 2, organized small shows on the Lower East Side and supported himself by designing T-shirts and album covers for hip-hop acts like Gang Starr. An early break took place in 2003, when he was invited by Agnès B. to be in a group show in Paris that spotlighted up-and-coming New York art stars like Dan Colen, Ryan McGinley and Dash Snow. From there, Mr. Parlá"s profile grew. He landed his first large-scale mural in 2009, for a residential development in Toronto called City Place. "That cemented that I could work big in a large public commission," he said. That paved the way for the Barclays commission, which began when Sarah Lewis, an art adviser for the arena, urged the board to consider Mr. Parlá"s work. Jay-Z, already a fan of his, echoed the idea. It took several site visits and mock-ups, but he secured the commission handily. The mural took six months to complete. Throughout, Mr. Parlá worked late nights, zipping between Barclays and the nearby Brooklyn Academy of Music Fisher Theater, where he was also creating a lobby mural. "The security guards at BAM called me the vampire," he said. He hasn't slowed down. After his tour of the Barclays mural, Mr. Parlá went back to his home studio in nearby Fort Greene, a converted 1900 carriage house on St. Felix Street that once was the headquarters of Spike Lee's film company. On the first floor is a studio filled with huge canvases for a show in Tokyo. The upper floor, where he lives alone, is a bright loftlike space, furnished with treasures he has collected over the years, including a plywood chair by the artist Sebastian Errazuriz and bold geometric abstracts by the 98-year-old Cuban artist Carmen Herrera. "I do well, but I also support my family," he said. We came from poverty. The commissions keep on coming. He has created murals for a new library at North Carolina State University, designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta. And he is among those being considered for Snohetta's future library in the Rockaways. Despite the heavy workload, Mr. Parlá has no intentions to take on assistants. "Nobody can paint like me," he said with a touch of Brooklyn swagger.