One of the most popular street artists is the one done on the walls. It has a history that dates back to the ancient Egyptian and Greek periods. Graffiti can be used to convey a message or simply to make a smooth wall look more attractive. This is the most impressive street art in the whole world.
Vibrant street art decorates buildings around the world. While urban graffiti may be the first type you can think of, street art actually takes many different forms, from sculptures to “thread bombardments”, and is found in a wide range of environments. Here, we've brought together the work of our favorite street artists, encompassing talents you already know and relatively unknown things you'll want to know. Artists' motivation ranges from simply cheering up their neighborhoods to making political statements.
But whatever its objectives, the art that has been produced is inspiring. If you're feeling inspired, check out our roundup of the best graffiti fonts (opens in a new tab) and use the influence of street art in your own designs. Self-taught artist Rasmus Balstrøm (opens in new tab) described him as a fast Corona burner when he was in Los Angeles this year (he's from Copenhagen). With a message to stay safe, he said: “It's a pleasure to finally paint before we have to flee the country” on his Instagram.
Koh Hooi San (Caryn Koh) is a Malaysian artist who used to work in the medical field. According to the artist, this piece, Connections, is about the accessories we have and the new ones we build. We love how the figure of women is painted through the containers, connecting them together. Okay, we know this isn't exactly on the street.
Banksy may have created amazing pieces all over the world, but one of our favorites arrived this year during lockdown. With the legend that my wife hates that I work from home, Bansky published this piece from her bathroom, which made us smile at a time when the streets seemed to be a world away and showed the world that you don't have to leave home to be super creative with street art. Although we are very happy that we don't have to use that bathroom, by the way. Hazard, also known as Harriet Ford, is a British street artist whose work is recognizable by her bold and peaceful depictions of women with detailed hair and headpieces.
The steps have a theme from sea to sky and local residents sponsored handmade tiles in the shapes of animals, fish and shells. Three mosaic workshops were held within the community so that everyone could help create this impressive street art. London-based artist Dean Stockton (also known as D*Face (opens in a new tab)) creates works inspired by things he loved as a child (skate graphics, album covers and cartoons), and part of his work is clearly indebted to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. An example of this is Behind Closed Doors, an epic piece of street art that can be found on the side of the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas.
The design cleverly uses the shape of the building to give the mural an additional sense of depth. Antonio Segura Donat, or Dulk (opens in new tab), grew up copying illustrations of exotic animals from his parents' old encyclopedias and used to carry his sketchbook everywhere. After studying illustration and then graphic design, he now works as a multidisciplinary artist who deals with drawing, painting, sculpture and advertising, but what really stands out is his large-scale street art, with surreal creatures in imaginary landscapes. Mobstr (opens in new tab) is a multifaceted street artist with a strong presence on fake billboards, but it's his Progressions that we love the most.
Documented through a series of photographs, he plays fantastic mind games with the poor who are dedicated to cleaning up street graffiti, using little more than printed letters. Chile's cultural capital, Valparaíso is home to many talented artists, including Mario Celedon (opens in a new tab). Best known for its incredible street art, Celedon's colorful and detailed paintings can be seen in several places around the city, but our favorite piece of art are the intricate illustrations of these steps. Italian street artist Manuel Di Rita, who goes by the nickname Peeta (opens in a new tab), is known for his 3D graffiti.
Using color gradients, his 2D street art gives the impression of multiple dimensions, creating the illusion that it is a sculpture, rather than painting. In addition to this, the artist creates authentic street art sculptures inspired by graffiti. Since he began creating street art in 1993, Peeta has traveled all over the world and has spent a lot of time in both Canada and the United States. After gaining a lot of experience as a graffiti artist in Europe and America, he began painting canvases and now runs his own business selling canvases and sculptures.
Sheffield-based Phlegm (opens in a new tab), got his start in self-published comics before bringing this detailed illustration style to the streets. The British artist creates surreal images in the style of a storybook, working only in monochrome. Each piece of street art is part of a great narrative that spans the globe, from Canada to Australia. This impressive piece of street art was created to mark the opening of the Urban Nation contemporary art museum in Berlin.
It is the work of visual artist Mademoiselle Maurice (opens in a new tab) and features a flock of 3D birds that come to life in metal origami. Herbert Baglione (opens in a new tab) is a Brazilian street artist. A particularly surprising project, entitled 1000 Shadows, led him to add his stamp to an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Parma (Italy). Balione created creepy shadows on the building's floors, walls and doors, and often interacted with abandoned wheelchairs to make it even scarier.
The Vrubel mural is an interpretation of a photograph taken in 1979, on the 30th anniversary of the celebration of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The kiss itself had no romantic intention, it was a “Bruderkuss” (fraternal kiss), which was a popular socialist greeting at the time. The men in the photograph are Leonid Brezhnev, Secretary General of the Soviet Union, and Erich Honecker, Secretary General of the Socialist Unity Party of the GDR. In the “mortal love” Vrubel refers to could be the ten-year military agreement established by the two states, which included the supply of chemical weapons to the Soviet Union.
This mural is now emblematic not only of the Berlin Wall, but also of the city itself. Feminist street artist Maya Hayuk is known for her vibrant geometric compositions that dominate buildings around the world. Although her lively abstractions are extremely aesthetically pleasing, her work has a deeper political background; Hayuk refuses to work with galleries if her representation of female artists falls below 10%. Lately, we have noticed a growing artistic trend, one that we are especially excited about.
Street artists from all over the world have found incredibly intelligent ways to incorporate what nature has to offer. Trees, shrubs, and brushes take on completely new meanings as art is created around them. From a lonely man opening a green curtain to a family of brown bears happily playing in a forest, these pieces are even more intriguing because they actually include living beings. Here, then, are our 10 best examples in which street art merges fantastically with nature.
Alexey Menschikov, a resident of Penza (Russia), is a master at creating simple street art illusions. In this green fence, have you made the silhouette of a dead tree branch, or is it still alive? A solitary leaf sprouts at the top, leading us to believe that the branch mysteriously floats in the air. As a tribute to the recently deceased Russian street artist Pasha P183 (also known as the Russian Banksy), Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic created this piece of “hide and seek”. Located in Bangasar, Kuala Lumpur, it shows a man wearily removing a curtain of vegetation to look at the street.
The American street artist, Keith Haring, was not only an established street artist, but a social activist in his own right. The artist Cryptik, based in Los Angeles (opens in a new tab), stands out for his calligraphic approach to street art. He began creating street art in 1999, spending several days in his studio preparing wheat pasta posters made with recycled paper and then transporting the finished works to urban public spaces, where he glued them to walls. The work is a good example of how some renegade street artists were able to move from their unauthorized urban canvases to become a credible art forum.
After first painting it so that it was in an upright position, the street art team remade the piece to make it look like it had been cut. German artist Claudia Walde (MadC) combines her formal artistic training with street art, rewriting contemporary urban art. In recent decades, this practice has spread all over the world, often maintaining elements of the American wild style, such as intertwined letter shapes and bold colors, but also taking on a local touch, such as street art from Japan inspired by manga. This phenomenon also presents difficulties for art historians, since the large number of street artists, as well as their tendency to remain anonymous, make it difficult to interact with individual artists in a profound way.
Although some street artists create installations or sculptures, they are best known for their use of unconventional artistic media, such as spray paint, stencils, wheat pasta posters and stickers. However, at the same time, bad street art can ruin a very nice downtown building, making all neighborhoods look dilapidated and unattractive. Some apply the post-graffiti label to the work of street artists who also participate in the world of conventional art, although it is a bit inappropriate, since many of these artists continue to carry out illegal public interventions while participating in authorized exhibitions in galleries and museums. The Harreman Project, by Reskate Studio, based in Barcelona (opens in a new tab), uses paint that glows in the dark to create street art with hidden depths.
Specialized computer programs allow artists (such as MOMO, born in San Francisco) to better plan their graffiti works and prepare their templates and posters of wheat pasta, while digital photography used in conjunction with the Internet and social networks allows them to document, share and immortalize works of street art, where before most of the pieces tended to disappear when municipal authorities removed them or painted them by other artists. Reverse graffiti poses a unique problem for law enforcement officers, who are generally conditioned to understand street art as a form of vandalism. . .
