Barbara

Barbara

Barbara – that's how he or she is called,  however, nobody really knows since this (let's say probably female) streetartist from Germany wants to stay completely anonymous and doesn't want to tell anything about her identity. Anonymity to her means freedom and she wants her art to be rated by itself and not by who she is.

Her street art can be admired in Berlin, but after she moved to Heidelberg for private reasons you can see her works in that new location as well. She´s also known beyond the city limits, seeing as her fanbase on Facebook is rather big; also, numerous interviews were made in Germany as well as in Austria by „Spiegel“, „Stern“, „dem Kurier“ and other magazines.

The main point of her work is to comment or estrange road and evidence signs, advertising or graffiti by sticking on own notes of paper. So you see signs like „Plakate ankleben verboten“ being answered with a „Das respektiere ich zu 100%. Doch wie hätte ich dir das mitteilen sollen, ohne ein Plakat hinzukleben?“ or „Ausfahrt Tag und Nacht freihalten“ changing to „Rassisten Tag und Nacht Mund halten.“ (Pictures and translations can be seen below.)

Her comments sometimes have a political background, but oftentimes they're simply funny.

Her conjunction to streetart already started while she was a small child when her grandfather told her about the meaning of twisted crosses.

Young Barbara decides to draw windmills of them.
Since then she has kept her enthusiasm for her art and of course she's always ecxited about comments and feedback that she's getting on her work. She earns a lot of positive feedback with many of her facebook-posts, with politic-criticizing posts there are often big discussions which seem precious to her.

The fact that her mostly on paper written comments cant´t resist opponents or the rain and consequently dissappear within a few days or months, sometimes even hours, doesn't matter to her. As long as it is immortalized on fFcebook and seen by her fans she is contented.

"Keep driveway clear day and night!" turns into "Racists keep your mouths shut day and night!"



Sign on top: "Post no bills."
Sign below: "I respect that to 100%. But how was I supposed to tell you that without posting a bill?"



Kid Crow

Kid Crow

Carlos Lorente, better known as Kid Crow, was born in Ansbach in 1978. From 2000 to 2002 he completed his training to become a media designer (IHK).
From 2003 to 2006 he studied American and Romance studies before proceeding with communication science (2007-2008) in order to finally become a Bachelor of Communications. Carlos won numerous prizes for his art, e.g. the 'Jugendkulturpreis("Youth culture prize") Ansbach in 2005. Worth mentioning is that the 'Kid Crow Artbook' was released in August 2010. Kid Crow makes graffitis, either on a wall or digitally. Furthermore he designs graffitis in outdoor areas or in the interior.

Comics and Cartoons initially introduced him to art, later books about art and several museums did. Another reason why he discovered art for himself were many tours in the Halls of Fame where famous graffiti artists are allowed to paint their images. A great influence for him as an artist has also been the 'Alte Schule'-LP-Cover from Mode 2 in 1993, as well as his first visit in Basel, where he visited the "Line" (a railway line adorned with lots of graffiti, see pictures here.)

But why is this Streetart artist actually named "Kid Crow"?
Well, at first he painted pictures without having a pseudonym that had a special meaning or sense. But someday he got a book about crows and he was fascinated by the fact that crows are actually songbirds, but can't even sing or also that you can find those birds all over the world. He identified with the loyality and sociality of them and with the bad reputation of crows because streetart artists like him usually don't have the best reputation as well. Streetart is still not completely accepted amongst the society. Later 'Kid' was added to his pseudonym because he still feels like a child inside and he doesn't take himself too serious.

He desrcribes his style as a mixture of cartoonish Westcoast-Characters and classic Eastcoast-Styles. Kid Crow also offers workshops with his company 'Style Scouts'. We took part in such a workshop and we can just recommend spending a day with Kid Crow, it was a great experience. We also wrote an article about our day with Kid Crow. Click here and find out!

In the end, here are a few pictures for you showing Kid Crow's artworks in the underpass at the subway in Ansbach (always furnished with his tag).

His tag can be seen on the left side, the black letters with the yellow frame

 


  

Keith Haring

Keith Haring

Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania. In 1978, when he moved to New York City to study at the School of Visual Arts, he began making colorful chalk drawings in subway stations. His art was eventually seen everywhere around the world. He was also known for his effort in making people aware of AIDS. When he died of his HIV-infection on February 16, 1990, he had only reached 31 years of age.

Haring is one of the most popular graffiti artists in the world.

He drew his artworks on pasted over advertising spaces in subway stations; however he never painted a train.

He was fascinated by the thought of reaching people who would never visit a museum or an exhibition.

He is known for the colorful backgrounds, the multicolored figures with black outlines and his mind-blowing symbolism.

His signature was unique, for example his dancing figures, a barking dog, the "radiant baby" (crawling infant emitting light), an alien spaceship and figures with TVs for heads.

The topics of his artworks:

A           Perversion of religion

A           AIDS

A           Racism

A           Capitalism

A           Sexuality

A           Drugs

A           Nuclear power

A           Apocalypse

A           War

A           Death

Haring was creating something that was looking like meaningless but actually it was meaningful.

Keith Haring was a very modest person; he never requested for money, nor did he seek for attention.

He just wanted to do something and send this something as a message to the threatened world.

I’ve found a very cool and short video about Keith Haring. It’s worth watching!