ROA

ROA

1. Anonymous mural artist from Ghent, Belgium
2. Obsession for animals
3. Reveals life, death and life after death in his murals
4. Animals include skeleton and organs
5. Paints animals that are native to the area being painted
6. Uses only three colours: black, white and red
7. His distinctive black & white style can be found worldwide

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3Steps

3Steps

3Steps is the German artist's group of the twins Kai Krieger and Uwe Krieger as well as Joachim Pitt from Giessen. 3steps lives and works in the university town Giessen in hessen. 3Steps was founded in autumn, 1998. From the classical graffiti of the New York Stylewriting her style developed out fast to large-size wall stories. Since the middle of the year 2000 their works are found on the whole globe, from Giessen over Munich and Berlin to London, Milano, Venice, L. A. and New York. In November, 2014 they were distinguished by the Federal Government for their art with the title “Kultur- und Kreativpiloten Deutschland”

Their conceptual pictures were influenced from their trips since 2007 more and more from classical graffiti art and Street art to an urbane pop art collage. Besides, characters and her stories take a central role, but classical graffiti elements and graphic patterns are still creation elements.

The work of 3steps has his origin in the Mural and Street art. The today's style of 3steps contains influence of Street art as well as elements of the Style-Writing, the photo realism, the pressure graphics and the pop kind. Big reflexion of the today's world which is marked by varying kind from reality, fiction, media and desirable worlds picks out as a central theme of 3steps. The group expresses this by colour-intensive picture worlds.

A central object of the works of 3steps are motives of the daily life which tell a special story to the viewer.  strong and intensive colours as well as clear patterns should express the urban glamour.

As a basis of the works serve own portraits and fashion photographs as well as views of architecture of urbane town sceneries. On this occasion, 3steps take up the impressions which they have held on their trips through the urbane metropolises in Europe and America.

The port folio of 3steps encloses works of large-size Mural kind about Street kind, to paintings on wood and canvas, photographs and  things up to installations.

You can easily go to Giessen and buy a picture from them on canvas.

Martin Ron

Martin Ron

Martin Ron, born in 1981 is a painter and muralist from Caseros in the Privince of Buenos Aires, Argentine.

From a young age Martin became immersed in the visual arts and attending classes of painting, drawing, comics and sculpture until he found his vocation – painting murals and street art.

His artworks, often described as “urban surrealism”, stand out for their visual impact and big size. The characteristica of his work is an incredible use of the technique of hyper-realism combined with elements of fantasy to create unique compositions on walls and buildings. Martin paints impossible situations that give the impression of happening in real life (realism).

There’s a stunning mural of Martin Ron in Buenos Aires. It features a giant turtle flying out of a hole in the wall and an old man and his dog . The title of the mural is ‘Pedro Luján and his Dog’. Martin told Buenos Aires Street Art about its meaning and what the images represent: “Using a marine turtle was ideal because it has the characteristics that I needed to achieve the effect of 3-D,” said Martin. “The turtle is beautiful animal and has a lot of colours and textures. It’s really interesting to paint. It’s not an animal that is seen a lot and it seemed ideal to take it out of its normal context and put on it on the walls of Barracas.”

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Blu

Blu

Main information: not given.

Blu is an Italian graffiti/streetart artist born in the 1980s in
Senigallia. His actual home is in Bologna, but that’s everything that is known about his person in detail.

Graffiti by Blu on a wall in Campobasso-Molise-Italia, showing the ‘career’ of a soldier…

• he is one of the most famous artists in the mural scene
• his style is global and designed for social criticism
• back in the 90’s the big graffiti boom in Italy left its mark on Blu -> nowadays, his art has changed from graffiti style to real street art style, even if his technique shows his roots
• comic styled and surreal motives are dominating his work
• his preferred colour is white (it shines brighter during night)
• most of his graffiti are in Italy

Martin Watson

Martin Watson

Martin Watson, born in 1984, is a young Norwegian artist who bases his oeuvre on stencil art. He studied art and graphic design at Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo where he discovered stencil art and the urban art scene.

After tracing graffiti and its development, he started his own stencil production about 11 years ago in the winter of 2004. Inspired by artists like José Parla and Cy Twombly, his art becomes a mixture of graffiti and stencil.

He gets inspired by people, city landscapes, old buildings, graffiti and derelict walls. His interest in decay helped to develop his style, motives and composition. 

Martin Watson enjoys creating a unity of contrasts between materials, backgrounds, motives and human intervention. He uses grey tones as a basis but he adds vibrant colours to break the monochrome concrete expression and bring a splash of life to his motives. 

Nowadays he has had several shows in metropolises all over the world, like Paris, Tokyo, London, Los Angeles and New York.

http://martinwhatson.com/outside/

#prayforparis

http://martinwhatson.com/inside/

Magda Sayeg

Magda Sayeg

Magda Sayeg is considered to be the mother of Yarn bombing, which is also known as urban knitting, but actually she’s a textile artist in Austin, Texas.

One day she wrapped the door handle of her store because she thought that it looks boring and she wanted to make it more colourful. People passed by, stopped because it was something new and they liked it. So this was the birth of urban knitting.  

Crochet covered bus in Mexico

Covered parking meters

Magda describes her work that way: „My passion is with the material: I love displacing handmade, mostly knitted, material in environments where it seemingly doesn’t belong… only to discover that they can coexist quite harmoniously. The exploration of environmental change drives me: provoking the world to be a more challenging, unconventional, and interesting place."

Route Master Double Decker bus in London

                               

Nowadays she’s a member of the group Knitta Please (short form: Knitta). With the help of them, the highlights of her early work include the knitting covered bus in Mexico City, as well as a solo exhibition in Rome at “La Museo des esposizione”, where she explored the usage of lighting with knitted material.

Today she’s doing leading community-based projects like covering parking meters or she’s working on commissions around the world with brands like 7UP, Gap or Mini Cooper.

Knitted Gun in Sweden

                              

         

Vhils

Vhils

His real name is Alexandre Farto, he was born on the first of January in 1987 in Lissabon, that for he´s an portuguesen Street-Artist. Now he´s living in Seixal and normally he works as an Illustratior, graphic artist, for advertising agencies or video animation. His Streetart career started already with 13 years with spraying Graffitis, but in order to reach a bigger number of inhabitants of his city he began to try also other methods of streetart. 

Today he mainly focuses on scratching, revising advertising or explosive Streetart, which means he busts his motives into the wall. To process his material, which insists of stone, wood, cork, etc., he uses drills, air hammers, acid or even dynamite.

Since Vhils took part at the cans-festival 2008 in London, organized by Banksy, which is a big streetart-festival, he belongs to the most popular streetartists in Europe, because in London his art caused a big sensation. Since then he took part at a lot of streetart festivals in many different countries so now his art can be seen almost all over the world, on the street or in museums.  

Vhils uses the principe of vandalism to create something new. By destroying a wall with dynamite or a drill he creates enormous pictures. That´s his way to express himself.

Various and Gold

Various and Gold

The artist duo Various & Gould from Berlin has been working in close collaboration since 2005. Both share the love for paper, enthusiasm for accidental beauty in everyday life and urban art. Collaborations with friends and the work in public form the basis for their common creating.

Various and Gould deal with social themes such as work, migration, identity, death and the current financial crisis, in a playful and humorous way.

Both prefer methods like silk-screen printing, collage and poster, but recently they begun experimenting with public performance and installations.

After their study in the academy of art in Berlin (KHB) in Weißensee both made their degree in 2010.

The duo's first large mural can be found in Berlin. It reflects their love for collages and screen-printing. The image is part of their same-titled series “Face Time“ which subverts the idea of portraits in a traditional sense and plays with fictional patchwork identities.

Additionally the Berlin artists temporarily installed a so-called “WitchHunt“ in various cities. This witch-hunt should not be understood as a chase, but rather as an interactive scavenger hunt, in which you seek their portrait-posters of fascinating people. The paste-ups are equipped with QR-codes. Through texts and audio tracks you can find out where the next poster is located and learn more about these people. For this printings a particular color was used that allows the ignition of matches on the artworks.

An other project was the Marionette “Heinrich” in June 2012. The urban-artists installed a life-size marionette beneath the Görlitzer Bahnhof in Berlin.

One of their most famous project is the “modern saints” poster series. They created different saints each of them for one relevant and social problem. They pick issues like globalization, climate change, financial crisis and torture out as a central theme.

In summer, 2013 Various and Gould led the Kunstworkshop “Street meets art“ for Teenagers. The motto was: “the wall is the game!”

Go visit their official homepage if you're interested in finding out more about them!



Evoca1

Evoca1

Evoca1 is a painter, muralist and designer based in Miami, Florida.
Born in the Dominican Republic in 1984, he never experienced a formal art training at school, but taught himself how to paint with oil, acrylic, latex and spray paint. One of several exhibitions his art played a role in is the Urban Nation/Stolen Space Gallery in Berlin, Germany (2015).

He had or still has a lot of projects going on such as his project 'tiempo par matar' (eng. "killing the time") commissioned by Microsoft Windows in 2013. His mural 'Guardians' was

comissioned by American Express during Miami Art Week in 2013. *Project M/8 | Urban

Nation – Berlin, Germany (2015). 10 large scale panels at the nearby Urban Nation office

can be found in the Project M/8, Urban Nation in Berlin. There's a collection of new

works at Urban Nation's gallery space by 10 artists such as Shepard Fairey, D*face and

others. Those panels will be on display until the official opening of Urban

Nation's upcoming permament collection in 2016.

Another project that is very important to Evoca1 and for which he shows a lot of

engagement is 'SKETCHESFORMANKIND'. This Project was established in late 2010 and

Evoca1, along with the help of his wife and friends, was able to raise awareness to important local and world issues through art.
'SKETCHESFORMANKIND' raises funds for those in need in the community. Since 2010 they have been extending their humanitarian efforts by feeding 200 homeless people during the monthly 3rd Sunday for Hunger Event, an event they host on the 3rd Sunday of every month in the Downtown Miami area.
Furthermore Philantrophy is an important value he wants to represent with his art.

Loomit

Loomit

General information

Loomit is a German street artist who lives in Munich. In the international graffiti scene his
distinctive style is rated to the Hall of Fame. Moreover he is a pioneer in the German graffiti
scene. His real name is Mathias Köhler and he was born in Celle (Bavaria) in 1968.

Biography

When he was 15 his “career” started because he painted the word graffiti on a water tower in
Buchloe. In this time this spraying was a little scandal due to the fact that the people never
saw something like this before.  Several years later he got caught while spraying. Since the
lawsuit in 1984 he uses his artist name Loomit. Only one year later he sprayed a Pinup-girl
and their fake names on the train of Geltendorf with six other artists. The train of Geltendorf
was the first extensive painted in Germany, so it was a big scandal in these times. In the mid-
90s he travelled in the USA where he was a witness of the golden days of graffiti. In America
he met other street artists like Seen. From him he learned how to tattoo. Back in Germany he
organised his first solo exhibition in Darmstadt in 1996.

Work and projects

Besides his normal work he also realises projects like Zeichen der Zeit (sign of time) in
Hamburg (Germany) and Mural Global in São Paulo (Brazil).

Sign of time

Loomit designed the wall Zeichen der Zeit (engl: sign of time) with many other artists.
Together they gained an article in the book Guinness world records because they created the
uppermost graffiti of the world. For this project they need 1000 aerosol cans. The work was
placed under the topic time.

Mural Global

In São Paulo Loomit sprayed a wall which involved 300m² together with seven other street
artists in 2001. The wall includes the topics: air, earth, fire and water.
If you are interested in Loomit, check out his documentary (unfortunately it is in German):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E74CEecsfiM

Alice Pasquini

Alice Pasquini

She is one of the most important female streetartists. She was born in Rome and works as an illustrator, set designer and painter. Alice graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and has lived and worked in France, Great Britain and Spain.

She became a streetartist because of her relationship with the French graffiti artist Christian Guemy, alias C215 (you can find the article about him here.)

Alice prefers city walls and is particularly interested in the representation of women. With her art she wants to demonstrate the small moments between people and their connections to each other. She wishes to represent human emotions. She’s travelling widely, bringing her artwork to life on the streets of different cities across the globe, such as Sydney, New York, Barcelona, Oslo, Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Marrakech, Berlin, Saigon, London, and Rome. In addition, Alice has completed projects with international clients, such as Nike, Range Rover, Toyota, Canon and Microsoft.

And here you can see a few of her works:

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One of her works in Brooklyn (go to source)





Os Gêmeos

Octavio and Gustavo Pandolfo - Os Gêmeos

Since the late 1980s the twin brothers have been working under the name Os Gêmeos, which means "twin brothers" and stands for "one world, one voice" among other associations they make. 

As children, the street and studio artists would find themselves drawing on the same sheet of paper and seamlessly completing one another’s work. At the age of 12, the brothers used many different kinds of materials for their graffiti projects – just what they had available, including car paint, latex and spray cans.

Later they were influenced by hip-hop and breakdancing and their little knowledge about graffiti culture helped them to develop their own visual vocabulary.

Os Gêmeos are no strangers to mural work; their colorful images adorn buildings in cities like Berlin, Lisbon, New York, Moscow, Athens.
In their native country Brazil they have even painted whole trains - after successfully persuading the authorities to let them do it. 

Painting graffiti on the streets of their home country São Paulo, they first imitate the styles of New York City, but slowly both discovered their own style and embedding it to their work.

Today Os Gemeos' individual characters with their yellow skin and colorful clothing appear on public walls, galleries and museums around the world.

The Wynwood Walls (go to source)

For the Wynwood Walls, Os Gêmeos collaborated with Nina and Finok, two Brazilian artists they have worked with many times before, so it was an easy and comfortable process to decide what to paint. They discussed all the details and made a lot of sketches before coming to the final composition. 

To understand the work of Os Gêmeos, it is necessary to allow reason to be replaced by the imaginary – so allowing ourselves to realize the fineness in the world around us. That means: to feel first and to understand later.

El Bocho

El Bocho

El Bocho works as a typographer and as an illustrator in his daily life. However, during the night he changes the medium and uses the city as a playground. He keeps his real name as a secret, he's doing it because anonymity is an essential for the street artist and he loves the kick of creating illegal art, through this he makes himself often punishable.

Besides his exhibition in the gallery, he applies his work on the street. His works were founded in the streets since 1997-already before he starts his illustration and the study of typography. He's among one of the artists who stamps the streets of Berlin visibly with his special and original works, which made him popular not only within Germany but world wide.

What's important for him is the work done beyond the art scene, because this gets almost in-touch with everybody than art in galleries, so he collected the reactions of the viewers and applied it into his works. That's how it appears a constant flow of communication within the public. To get contact or in touch with the people he elects items for his work which are easy to present, on his humorous poster series he comments down the way of life in the city. In his portrait series, in which you can find the Berlin gallery named Raab as well as on the streets of Berlin he also dives into the intellectual world of the citizens. For the creation that he uses hand made posters which are four meters long. He uses his own skills and technique to placard the walls because his special poster paper connects in a slowly procedure with the subsoil by means of the sun and wind.

Besides the established streetart techniques like installations, templates or cut, El Bocho also uses wall tiles which he already installed in many European metropolises.

Here's an interview (Unfortunately it's in German).

Invader

Invader

Invader is a pretty famous French street artist, who uses most often plates or tiles of porcelain for his mosaic artworks. His name is related to a popular 8-Bit arcade-video-game called Space Invaders, which has been published in 1978. In fact, all of his artworks, which are already spread into 60 different cities in 30 different countries, are created in this 8-Bit-style, often showing characters or creatures of 1980’s video games. In contrast to this, he is, for some years now, also installing giant QR codes, made of porcelain tiles, too. All of his artworks are part of his space invaders-project, which is designed like a game. Every new mosaic gains a score from 10 to 100 points and in a consequence of this, all cities, containing space invaders have their overall score and Invader tries to continous raise every cities score by "sending" new waves of his mosaics.

His real identity is well-secured and only a hand full of people knows his real name. According to his website http://www.space-invaders.com/ , Invader describes himself as an unidentified living artist (ULA), which is a reference to his science fiction-fanship in view of his artworks, describing unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

Moses and Taps

Moses and Taps



Who are they?
Nobody knows.
According to official sources, the name "Moses and Taps" revolves around two or more sprayers who have ascended to the olymp of the top sprayers, thanks to their train graffiti.
Anybody who doesn't know them as Writer is either living under a rock or doesn't own an internet connection.
Due to their incredibly audacity the guys managed to accessorize 1000 trains within 1000 days, always one or more steps ahead of their spoilsports.
By that, the definition of the upper limit is set, anybody crossing the line is plain crazy.
With a lot of wit, humour and even more style, masterpieces have been created whereby - with the help of skilfull spraying - a carriage's door changed sides after a night on the stabling siding.
Meanwhile, Moses and Taps are even hunted by their own special commission - thank God unsuccessfully.
A few single Moses and Taps-sprayer have already been standing on trial, however, they were absolved.
In order to enable the quick and flexible spraying on trains (or carriages), an extremely fastidious scheduling is necessary - they guys supposedly have gotten themselves a train card, legally of course!
The troop's members lead a rather normal life by day (to be able to finance the entire fun), just to march out at night again, painting the towns and trains of our world red.
Additional to that, Moses and Taps are even getting sponsored by certain enterprises, equipping them with spray cans produced specifically for them.
Moreover, the group around the pseudonym "Moses and Taps" allowed themselves to publish their own photobook, containing impressive photographs of 800 of their works.
At arrestment, the underground artists are threatened with as many as two and a half years of prison.

Banksy

About Banksy

General information:

Banksy is an anonymous, British graffiti artist, famous for his stencil graffiti in Bristol and London. Thanks to this fact, it is expected that Banksy was born in Bristol. He's trying to keep his identity a secret - which is working until now - nevertheless there exist many speculations about his real identity.

About his art:

Banksy is a stencil graffiti artist and uses the technique of “Guerrilla communication” (form of activism whereby subversive effects are being provoked through interventions in the process of communication) and “Adbusters” (outdoor advertising is defamiliarized, pasted over or reshaped to change the sense or to be ridiculed.) Because of his provocative art Banksy is thought-provoking.
Banksy's art work has been exhibited in galleries since 2000, although he actually declines the art market. He demonstrated his refusal of the art market in a campaign in New York, selling his work to unaware people for bargain prices.

Films and videos:
Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentation produced by Banksy. It was nominated for an Oscar and was released in the UK on March 5, 2010.

Moreover Banksy published the video "Make this the year. YOU discover a new destination." from the Gaza Strip in 2015. The video criticizes the devastation of the territory. Watch it here!


Identity:
The real name of Banksy is believed to be Rob, Robert or Robin Banks because he published three books under the name of "Robin Banksy." Furthermore he was called "Robin Banksy" in earlier interviews. However, the British boulevard-newspaper Daily Mail ascertained Banksy is Robin Gunningham who was born in Bristol on July 28th 1973. Gunningham descended from a middle-class family and visited a private school.
The word “gun” in his name could be an onomatopoeic equivalent of “Banksy." This is neither confirmed nor discounted by Banksy.



There's also the assumption that Banksy is a group of artists organised by women. One evidence might be that there exists no territory marking in the form of "tags", social equality is a central part of the artworks and feminine figures are used. Another indication that it's not one person but a group is that the voices in interviews are changing, sounding completely different each time.
Take a look at the “Banksy walking tour” where you can find his art in Bristol:
It is worth watching!

C215

C215

One of his artworks, Paris

C215, also known as Christian Guémy, born in 1973, is a French street artist focused on stencil graffiti. The ‘C’ in C215 represents his real name Christian, and the number signifies a hotel room in which he approximately decided what his life was going to look like. C215 liked the anonymity. He has been creating street art for about 20 years. In 2005 he started spray painting and today he's one of the most popular stencil artists who has already also been described as "France's answer to Banksy." Guémy’s daughter Nina is a popular subject of his stencil art. She has also become a stencil artist of her own.

Most of the time his work contains portraits of people. C215's subjects are typically those such as beggars, homeless people, refugees and street kids, representing the people that really belong to the streets, and kids who have no chance in life. He has practiced his art in cities all over the world. His stencils can be seen in Barcelona, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Paris, Oslo and Colombo and Berlin as well. In addition to his street work, C215 also produces commercial artwork on wood for galleries.

C215 murals and stencils can be seen in the Internet very often, because they’re very popular.

The best part about C215’s job, in his opinion, is that he creates what he truly loves: his artwork. C215 doesn’t have to worry about working a traditional job under a boss. He also believes that one should never follow anyone, nor copy others. They should simply follow their own style and feeling.

No matter how many times I’m looking at artworks by Parisian street artist, I'm always wondering just how he makes them. The texture, the color, the detail, all made with stencils and spray paint on any available object! It's truly impressive, take a look!

A stencil of C215 in Paris