5 urban art artists you need to know
Evidently, the first on this list of street artists is banksy. Mixing politics, humor and poetry through drawings of children, soldiers and even monkeys, the murals ofbanksy are an essential reference for all urban art artists. Through provocative images, the enigmaticbanksy creates highly engaging works of art. the english artistbanksy, with an anonymous identity, created its own language on the streets of the world, through stencils and graffiti. His works are easily identifiable by their graphic language and their own characteristics. Deeply figurative, these stencils critically address various social and political issues such as consumerism, political authority and terrorism. «Girl with Balloon» and «The Son of a Migrant from Syria» are two well-known and impressive works by Banksy. Currently, he is one of the most recognized and admired contemporary artists among the younger generations.
2.Vhils
Alexandro Farto, also known asVhils, is the Portuguese artist who gained international notoriety when Banksy invited him to the London Cans Festival in 2008. In the artistic scene in Portugal, he emerged in 2008, creating a revolution, through his innovative artistic practice, in which destruction is a form of construction.Vhils became an international phenomenon, mainly for its murals in public space, honoring José Saramago, Zeca Afonso, among others. The space where he grew up, Seixal, an industrialized suburb across the river from Lisbon (Portugal), profoundly influenced his practice due to the transformations caused by intense urban development in the 1980s and 1990s. Bordalo II, Banksy and Jean-Michel Basquiat, it was in the streets that the basis for his initial artistic production was formed, eventually projecting his perceptions of the outside world through his creative acts. He often carves faces in public spaces - on the side of buildings - with a variety of tools and materials that can leave a mark or remove materials, including hammers, drills, etching acid, bleach and explosives. In addition to mural sculpture, he has also been exploring other means such as serigraphy, installation and other media, such as advertising posters, wooden doors and metal plates that he collects from the streets. works byVhils such as “Open Walls Baltimore 1”, “POW! WOW! Hawaii 2014 - King Lunalilo Mural” and “Dusk” reflect current themes in the artistic scene, such as identity, representation, ephemerality and the experience of the individual in the consumer society.
3.Invader
You've probably seen several invaders on the walls of Paris or Los Angeles but didn't even know. Since the late 1990s, Invader turned the streets into an urban tribute to video games from the 80s, “invading” public spaces with a vintage and digitized reality. Never revealing his true identity,Invader uses popular computer game characters and puts them on the streets.
The Portuguese artist Artur Bordalo (1987), known as Bordalo II, became famous for using street garbage to create stunning animal sculptures, with the purpose of alerting people about pollution and all kinds of species that are endangered. From street art he developed his practice, evolving into what is now considered "trash art". His passion for painting dates back to his childhood, when he spent hours on end watching his grandfather paint in his studio and also due to the underworld of the city of Lisbon - strongly influenced at the time by graffiti practices. He started spray painting walls on the streets at the age of 11, with the artistic nameBordalo II, in honor and highlight the artistic legacy of his grandfather Artur Real Bordalo (1925-2017). In the painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon, he discovered sculpture, ceramics and began to experiment with the most diverse materials. Since 2012, Artur Bordalo has created around two hundred animal sculptures using over 60 tons of recycled materials. The formerly abandoned objects - the plates, the tires, the doors - in the hands ofBordalo II acquire an aesthetic and communicative function, in the shape of animals. The Portuguese artist wants to represent an image of nature in his works, based on what destroys them - garbage, waste and pollution, clearly expressing a critique of consumerism and offering a sustainable solution. His “Big Trash Animals” installations, spread across various locations around the world - public or museum - scream about the need for socio-ecological sustainability. On the streets of his hometown, a series of works, ”Provocative” and “Train Tracks”, interact with urban fabric and furniture, presenting a new critical look at society, its stakeholders and constraints. These small ephemeral interventions seek to be a vehicle of communication and awareness through art, thus addressing diverse themes, such as pollution, exploitation of women, media sensationalism, connectivity and control, among others.
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5.Shepard Fairey
An important figure in the contemporary urban art movement,Shepard Fairey rose to prominence in the early 1990s with his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” campaign, in which he distributed posters, stickers, and murals featuring the eponymous wrestler in Providence, Rhode Island. Fairey's iconic 2008 "Hope" campaign poster for President Barack Obama encapsulates a number of the artist's recurring concerns, including advertising, portraiture, and political power. the work ofShepard Fairey, which sold for six figures at auction, can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
