Justin Nagtalon aka El Toro, a beloved sticker artist and muralist, has died at 43

If you walk around Philly, there’s a high chance you’ve been smiled at by a Filipino water buffalo drawn on an USPS sticker label; be it in the back room of the South Street bar Tattooed Mom, on a newsstand on 15th and Walnut Streets, or stuck on street signs, buildings, cement barricades, and lamp posts around the city.

The buffalo and its creator are named El Toro, the pseudonym used by sticker artist Justin Nagtalon, who passed away at the age of 43 on March 7. The cause, confirmed by the family, was a heart attack.

Through a career that spanned more than 20 years, Nagtalon left a trail of multi-colored stickers across Philadelphia. With street artist Bob Will Reign, Nagtalon’s iterations of the two-legged buffalo brought the New York City and Western European culture of sticker art to Philly’s street corners.

In 2021, he shed his pseudonym and went from drawing on postage labels to turning the walls of restaurants like Baby’s Kusina + Market, Manong, and Tabachoy into his canvas. He also created the logo for WHYY’s Art Outside podcast series, and was commissioned to create an official game day poster for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2025.

His art inspired a generation of street artists to create sticker art and slap them onto surfaces all over Philly, “My heart hurts,” Nagtalon’s mother Jennifer wrote to The Inquirer in a text message. “[He was] such a loving husband ... a loving brother to his big sister and to his younger brother. A fun uncle to his nephews and nieces. Most of all, a very sweet and loving son to me.”

The joyous buffalo he created two decades ago was reflective of the artist himself, a man who is remembered for his radiant smile, vast imagination, and playful personality.

As a child growing up in in Quezon City, Philippines, Nagtalon spent days scribbling in his black moleskin notebook. By the time he was 7, he filled pages with hand-drawn images, using markers he stole from his older sister, Jamille Nagtalon-Ramos.

“Whenever I would attend one of his shows, I used to joke with him and say, ‘OK, you did good. I’m not mad at you for stealing my markers anymore,’” said Nagtalon-Ramos.

When Nagtalon was 10, he, with the rest of his family, moved from the Philippines to join their mother in Paterson, N.J., where she was recruited to fulfill a nurse shortage. Nagtalon’s father worked for the Bureau of Fisheries.

While the move was a significant cultural shift, Nagtalon found comfort in watching 1980s cartoons such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ThunderCats, and The Simpsons, and reading comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes.

Those early interests inspired the friendly alter ego, El Toro, later in Nagtalon’s life.

“All of my core interests are because of my brother,” Jethro David “JD” Nagtalon, Juston Nagtalon’s brother, said. “He’s the one that influenced me with cartoons, anime, and certain art that I like. He got me into skateboarding, too. We both skateboarded, badly. But we skateboarded badly together.”

While his sister followed his mother’s career footsteps, Nagtalon opted for a career in the arts. In 2001, he enrolled at the former Art Institute of Philadelphia to study graphic designing.

In a 2020 interview with Streets Dept, Nagtalon said he developed an interest in graffiti while growing up in New Jersey. He started writing graffiti in college, but soon focused his attention on sticker art after discovering the fast-rising European scene in the early days of the Internet.

“He found his medium. He just wanted to spread love and happiness and positivity through the world,” JD Nagtalon said.

Before landing on El Toro, which was inspired by Carabao, a swamp-type water buffalo native to the Philippines, Nagtalon told Streets Dept that his stickers featured “weirder characters.” He even considered adopting a “poop monster” before settling on the cartoon water buffalo.

“Every time I saw one, I felt like I was a kid again,” said Conrad Benner, the founder and editor of the art blog Streets Dept and a friend to Nagtalon.

By the time they met at the Art Institute, long-time friend Andrew Witter said Nagtalon’s artistic ambitions were in full bloom.

Witter recalled the two of them listening to MF Doom and playing Need for Speed: Underground on the Playstation 2. As early as 2003, Witter recalled, Nagtalon was putting up stickers throughout the city, Witter said.

“It was the path he wanted to take, and he never stopped,” he said.

Witter and fellow sticker artist Dana Williams watched as El Toro went from being one of Nagtalon’s many doodles, to a recognizable symbol of a burgeoning street art movement in Philadelphia. .

Williams called Nagtalon the “bigger visionary.”

“He saw the forest for the trees, as they say,” he said.

With frequent collaborator Bob Will Reign, Nagtalon forged connections with local gallerists, and soon drew the attention of early art sites such as Robots Will Kill (RWK).

ChrisRWK, who launched the site to spotlight underground artists, said Nagtalon and Bob “revolutionized the sticker scene” in Philadelphia.

Nagtalon worked anonymously for most of his arts career and collaborated with early sticker artists like Ticky 33, Underwater Pirates, and Noségo. He also played a significant role in transforming Tattooed Mom into an epicenter for street art. Not only by contributing his own work, but by connecting owner Robert Perry to other artists.

Nagtalon, ChrisRWK said, “was always smiling, and he had a positive feeling or attitude to any situation. You were naturally happy to be around him.”

Nagtalon met his wife Amanda Benson outside of Good Dog Bar in 2007. Benson said he flashed an “adorable smile,” which made her walk toward him.

And “that’s when [Nagtalon] said he panicked,” she joked.

The two bonded over their love for vinyl toys, pop-surrealist artwork, and First Friday events in Old City. A year before they met, Benson had attended an art show that featured the work of El Toro. On their first date, she noticed his tattoo and asked if he was the man behind El Toro. He said yes with no hesitation.

Five years later, in 2012, they were married at the Valley Green Inn along the Wissahickon Creek. The couple then took a cross-country roadtrip and moved to Los Angeles.

There, Benson said, Nagtalon drew El Toro nearly every day.

Benson and Nagtalon moved back to Philly in February 2021 to be closer to friends and family.

Upon his return, Nagtalon decided to shed his anonymity and reveal his true identity.

He initially hesitated, fearing his “illegal” graffiti practices would result in an arrest, but he wanted a more formidable presence in the city’s street art scene. He also wanted his nieces and nephews to be proud of the legacy he had carved out.

“I’m no longer afraid of who I am. And I think that’s it’s such a big leap to connect, and also to understand my art more,” Nagtalon said in a 2023 interview on WHYY’s Art Outside. “I think 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.”

While they didn’t have children of their own, Benson said her late husband loved kids, and spoiled his nieces and nephews.

Nagtalon’s nephew Leo Ramos, 21, said he and his sister Leilani looked forward to playing video games, riding bikes, and baking cookies with their Uncle Justin on all the holidays.

“You didn’t really think about those moments that we had growing up in the moment,” said Leilani, 19. “And then when you realize that person is gone, those memories suddenly flood back into your mind. And for me, they were all very sweet and vivid memories.”

It was Leo who rushed to his uncle’s home in Philadelphia on March 7, after receiving an emergency call from his mother. Nagtalon was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead from a heart attack.

Nagtalon-Ramos said her brother’s death, and the call she made to her son Leo, were eerily similar to the one she received from Nagtalon when their father died at age 44, also from a heart attack.

“I’m really going to miss his youthfulness,” Nagtalon-Ramos said. “I’m going to miss his interactions with my children. I’m going to miss that playful side of him. And I’ll really miss how he interacted with the world.”

JD said he’s going to miss their hilarious phone calls, shared Instagram posts, and the time they spent with one another.

“He was the happiest and most living person I ever met,” he said.

With Nagtalon’s passing, Bob Will Reign said he had lost his “partner in crime.”

He plans to continue posting stickers across Philly’s street corners as a way to carry on his friend’s legacy, both as El Toro and the kind-hearted soul he first met more than 20 years ago.

Dozens of Philadelphia street artists took to social media to post Nagtalon’s stickers, past El Toro collabs, and their photos with the beloved sticker artist. Others have made their own renditions of Nagtalon’s iconic character to honor him and his work.

“It’s been incredible to see the outpouring of grief, but also the support that’s been in his direction,” Benson said. “I just want to thank the people who have reached out. I’m so grateful for it.”

El Toro sightings on her walks, Benson said, will always remind her of the “joyful, playful, and hilarious” man she fell in love with nearly 20 years ago.

No public memorial is planned at this time. A Meal Train to support Benson was started by Nagtalon’s friends.