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What is street art, graffiti or art?

The answer to the question depends on the object, the spectrum ranges from wildly painted walls to legally sprayed murals to knitted lamp posts.

The fact that not everyone likes everything was true of Michelangelo and Matisse, and that is particularly true of street art.

Street art usually begins illegally - and ideally becomes a tourist magnet.

Some come because they think the sprayed works are cool, provocative, inspiring, others use them as a backdrop for Instagram selfies.

Hardly anyone today denies this popular form of street art the status of a work of art.

Especially since there are more and more cities that commission murals, often of huge dimensions, and provide entire facades for this, where the mostly young creative people legally go to work, with boxes full of spray cans and professional breathing masks.

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The importance of street art in many places can also be seen from the fact that there have been tours on the trail of street art that have long been sponsored by the tourism association.

Street art festivals are held elsewhere.

And once a spray artist has a household name, his work is even protected.

This is the case, for example, with Banksy's stencil graffiti.

To this day, Banksy has managed to keep his identity a secret, his works are always created at night and in fog - including a Madonna with a revolver in Naples, which is meanwhile protected from destruction with plexiglass.

Of course, not every smeared wall, every painted S-Bahn train is art.

But often just vandalism, which costs huge sums to remove.

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The subversive and illegal has always been part of street art.

Especially at the beginning there was a lot of excitement.

When Ina Deter smashed her song “I spray it on every wall” in 1982, the NDR filed a criminal complaint because the song was a call for property damage.

The later famous sprayer from Zurich also fared badly: Harald Naegeli painted stick figures on the walls of houses in the 1970s.

That caused a stir, in 1984 Naegeli had to go to jail for six months.

He saw his works as political art: a protest against the uniformity of cities.

He emigrated to Germany, where Willy Brandt and Joseph Beuys supported him.

A flamingo by the graffiti artist Harald Naegeli at an empty gas station in Düsseldorf

Source: pa / dpa / Rolf Vennenbernd

Today street art is seen mostly positively.

We agree with this point of view and present five European cities in which spray art plays a special role.

By the way, there is still something positive about street art: It is linked to the outdoors - and can be viewed safely even in times of pandemic.

Stavanger: murals against corona frustration

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Stavanger, a port city in southern Norway, grew rich from North Sea oil.

The street art festival Nuart has been taking place there and in the surrounding area since 2000.

Last year the event had to be canceled due to Corona.

Nevertheless, one of the most famous street art pictures was created in March 2020.

The Norwegian Pøbel (the pseudonym of one of the country's most famous artists) sprayed “Lovers” on a concrete wall in Bryne in the hinterland of Stavanger: an intimately intertwined, black and white pair of lovers.

The only color stain: those kissing wear blue masks.

Therese Nundal regularly organizes city tours in Stavanger, she wears a red and white Norwegian sweater - not by chance.

One of the graffiti it leads to shows a woman in a sweater like this.

With Nundal you pass huge murals, but also tiny, funny facade pictures.

Then someone pulls down the concrete curtain on a large house wall and reveals a colorful world.

If it weren't for the guide, you would have overlooked the small tiles near the floor with spontaneous slogans to which she refers.

Homage to the hospital staff: a new work by street artist Pøbel

Source: Artist: Pøbel;

Photo: Tor Staale Moen

International artists travel regularly to the Nuart Festival.

Nundal explains the difference between public art and street art in Stavanger as follows: “Art in architecture” is commissioned by the city;

with street art someone does exactly what he wants.

At the festival, homeowners voluntarily provide walls, says Nundal, whereby the requirement is that they are not allowed to make any specifications: “The artist has complete freedom.” Regardless of the festival, new works appear everywhere in Stavanger.

So quite normal - actually illegal - street art, which is often tolerated and not removed.

The Nuart Festival is deliberately not commercially oriented, but sometimes raises money for good causes.

Pøbel's “Lovers” picture was reproduced, printed on posters and T-shirts and sold - the proceeds went to the people in Brazil's Amazon region, who are particularly hard hit by the Covid pandemic.

The 2021 festival is scheduled to take place in September.

Anyone who comes to Stavanger should look at Pøbel's latest work at the University Hospital, which he sprayed on a wall there in February: It shows Norway's health minister carrying a nurse who is completely clad in corona protective clothing.

Pøbel announced that he wanted to show respect to the hospital staff with the picture.

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Information on guided tours with Therese Nundal: streetarttours.no, on Instagram: @gjellaa.

Due to the pandemic, there are currently no tours.

Vilnius: brightly colored instead of Soviet gray

To put it somewhat heretically, one could say: The USSR also had a lot of good things for street art.

Even if only in retrospect.

At that time there was no spillage, but padded with concrete.

The best canvas for street art.

Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, which had only involuntarily become part of the Soviet Union, took advantage of this.

In communist times, any kind of spray drawing was forbidden and risky.

Street art became all the more popular in the post-Soviet era - as a visible sign that this time is finally over.

In Vilnius, Vladimir Putin (left) and Donald Trump gently blow cannabis smoke in their faces while smoking weed

Source: Getty Images / Sean Gallup

Admittedly, Vilnius (Lithuanian: Vilnius) also has many classic sights to offer, especially in the renovated old town.

But the unadrete district of Uzupis is also worth seeing.

The working-class district became a bohemian district in the 1990s.

Artists moved into half-dilapidated old buildings, bars and alternative pubs opened.

New, colorful tones were used to counter the Soviet gray in passages and backyards.

The Vilnius Street Art Festival, to which international artists are invited, has existed since 2013.

They brought a number of cool murals to Vilnius, including a gigantic masterpiece by the Lithuanian Ernest Zacharevic (artist name ZACH) on the concrete facade of the former Lietuva cinema: two huge hands with ropes stretched between them, on which small people balance.

The Italian Millo painted the side of a four-story old building.

His mural bears the name “Freedom”, aptly fitting for post-Soviet Vilna.

The city is so proud of the large numbers of spray art that the tourist office has published an official street art brochure with a city map.

If you want to see all 55 works, you have a few days to do.

City map with street art: vilnius.streetartcities.com

Bristol: This is where world street art star Banksy is spraying

One of the most famous street artists of all comes from Bristol.

Most likely, anyway.

Banksy is said to be born here in 1974, but nobody really knows who Banksy actually is.

To this day, he has known not to reveal his identity.

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In Bristol - and in London - his typical stencil graffiti caught his eye for the first time.

For example, in Bristol, in the Stokes Croft district, the early work “The Mild Mild West” from 1999: a teddy bear armed with a Molotov cocktail facing police officers behind protective shields.

Over the years, new Banksys kept appearing in Bristol, for example in December 2020 “Aachoo!” (“Hatschi!”) - an older lady whose teeth and cane fly away when sneezing heavily.

"Mask on!" Is the message.

Mask on!

This Banksy work was discovered in Bristol in December 2020

Source: picture alliance / empics

Banksy's London Balloon Girl, created in 2002, is as famous as the Mona Lisa.

A girl made from stencils lets a red heart-shaped balloon fly away.

So far undiscovered, Banksy sprays his art, now to the delight of the neighborhood in which the pictures appear.

And that worldwide, from Jamaica to Japan.

Banksys can now even be found in museums, but without the involvement of the museum management.

Banksy prefers to deposit his exhibits in noble houses himself.

In the British Museum he put what appeared to be an antique pottery shard in a display case - on top of it a caveman stick figure with a shopping cart.

In the Louvre he hung his Mona Lisa: a grinning version that was later auctioned off at Sotheby's for £ 56,000.

In 2020, a Banksy picture popped up in a Southampton hospital celebrating a nurse as a superhero of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2020, a Banksy picture popped up in a Southampton hospital celebrating a nurse as a superhero of the coronavirus pandemic

Source: pa / empics / Andrew Matthews

While Bansky's subversive underground humor makes most people smile, street art activists see him as long lost to the establishment.

Bristol doesn't mind, his “hometown” has long since established itself on the street art map with his help.

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The neighborhoods of Stokes Croft, Easton and Bedminster are full of colorful pictures of various street artists - not just Banksy's.

And once a year Bristol hosts the Upfest: 300 artists from 25 countries around the world travel to this street art festival and spray.

Quite legally.

Upfest: upfest.co.uk;

In 2021, the festival is scheduled to take place on June 5th and 6th in conformity with Corona.

Lurcy-Lévis: The street art capital of France

Sure: New York's Bronx or the Parisian banlieue - these are places where you would expect street art.

But in a 2000-inhabitant town in the farthest corner of the Auvergne?

Absolutely!

Lurcy-Lévis even officially describes itself as a “Street Art City” and advertises with it.

France Télécom had built a huge training center here, that was in 1982, consisting of several concrete blocks.

From 1992 everything was empty.

In 2015, an investor with an understanding of art and idealism came: Gilles Iniesta bought the area and founded a street art center.

Street Art City: Tourists marvel at the colorful facades in Lurcy-Lévis

Source: AFP

Artists can live here and they even have their own cook.

France stop.

In return, they leave their works there.

Huge murals now cover the once gray concrete.

The sprayed facades have given the gloomy complex a new life, and art enthusiasts flock here in droves.

You can marvel at dreamy female faces, a steam locomotive, the self-portrait of a sprayer in a hoodie.

If you take a closer look, you will see that the works are characterized by a love of detail.

Many were created in days of work, the artists created them spraying in an uncomfortable position, kneeling on the floor, handling cranes.

One inevitably thinks of Michelangelo when he paints the Sistine Chapel.

"I'm already growing a goiter over this slump," he complained in a poem.

And further: "Meanwhile the brush, always over your eyes / A nice mosaic splatters on your cheeks."

Many of the works in Lurcy-Lévis were created in days of work; the artists created them kneeling on the floor or using cranes

Source: AFP

The "Hotel 128" is richly decorated inside and out like a baroque church.

Despite the name, you can't sleep in the four-story house, but you can dream away in the 128 rooms: Each room was designed from top to bottom - on the walls, ceiling and floor - by a different artist.

“You will come out drunk, with no drugs, alcohol or hangovers, but drunk with creativity,” the website promises.

If you don't believe it, go there as soon as it is allowed again, try it out and be enthusiastic about it: It's true!

Info: street-art-city.com

Munich: Lots of freedom for sprayers

In the well-tended Bavarian capital, of all places, the German graffiti scene met at the beginning of the 1980s.

Spilled over from New York, the first pictures on the flea market area on Dachauer Strasse flooded the walls there.

Legally, however, the city had approved it for street art.

Of course, things were also subversive and illegal in Munich.

In March 1985, seven young people sprayed a train on a siding, the first “Wholetrain” in Europe.

The students were caught and fined heavily, but also the fame.

Ten years later, one of them called himself Loomit; in the meantime he had been honing his artistry - and was commissioned to paint the bathroom of the then Mayor Christian Ude.

Loomit became an internationally sought-after “sprayer”, as they said at the time.

He then officially painted the pedestrian tunnel below the Angel of Peace together with other stars of the scene.

His messages are mostly political.

He and a colleague created a 22-meter-high mural near the main train station in memory of Georg Elser, who wanted to end the Nazi dictatorship in Munich with his bomb attack on Hitler in 1939.

An artist in the crane at the “Hands Off The Wall” festival 2020 in Munich

Source: Getty Images

Street art is now institutionalized in Munich.

There is even a museum for it: The MUCA Museum for Urban and Contemporary Art is located in the middle of the old town, in a former substation of the Stadtwerke.

Several big names in the scene - with artist names like Shepard Fairey, KRIPOE, NoNÅME, CYRCLE, Mark Jenkins, Ericailcane, BLU, ESCIF and SKULLPHONE - have left their mark on Munich.

"Said through the flower" is the name of one of the giant works, the Spaniard ESCIF painted a bouquet of flowers on a municipal building in Paul-Heyse-Strasse - made from products from the Munich armaments industry.

A lot of street art can be found on the Isarbrücken, under the Donnersbergerbrücke and in the “whiteBox”, an art quarter in a new part of the city by the Ostbahnhof.

And since 2018, Munich has offered an annual forum for female street artists with the “Hands Off The Wall” festival.

Info: whitebox-muenchen.de;

muca.eu;

Street art tours are organized by positive-propaganda.org and muenchen-safari.de.

This is how an artist beautifies the dirty streets in Moscow

Winter in Moscow is gray and dirty.

The ideal open-air studio for the artist Nikita Golubew.

He uses cars as canvases and dirt as paint.

Most of his works, however, only have a short lifespan.

Source: WELT / Christoph Wanner