Richard Hambleton

"Richard Hambleton has been called the godfather of street art. He began producing what he called ‘public art’ in New York City in the 1970s.He’s known for the black figures he first painted on the buildings of New York’s Lower East Side, which he called Shadowmen. The Shadowmen arrived in the early 1980s, and shocked many a denizen of that city who walked the streets at night. In 1981 and 1982 he populated the Lower East Side with these unnerving figures.A reclusive man, physically gaunt (somewhat creepy-looking himself), Hambleton had undertaken work of a similar bent before. In his Mass Murder project in the late 1970s, he drew crime-scene outlines of dead bodies on the street and had volunteers play homicide victims. Passersby mistook the installations for the aftermaths of real murders.Both these projects spoke to the zeitgeist, as US urban crime panics shook the nation in those decades. The Shadow men would shock passersby, who often mistook them for shadows of real people, possible assailants. Many people who lived in NYC around that time have stories of the moment they were petrified by a Shadowman and these stories seem to be almost a badge of honour top the artist with a distinctly morbid streak. For Hambleton audience reaction was integral to the artwork itself.He said:“Other artists put their work on the city, but what I paint on the walls is only part of the picture. The city psychologically completes the rest. People experience my paintings. They aren’t simply exposed to them.”His art was apparently inspired by the shadows left on the sides of buildings by victims of the atomic blast on Hiroshima. In an age of Cold War anxiety, perhaps his work pointed at the way people’s lives seemed to rest on a knife edge.The Shadowmen drew in other urban artists, who daubed over the black figures with their own work. Indeed, Hambleton was not a lone wolf. With Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, he was one of a legendary trio of New York artists at the forefront of the street art boom. The three regularly met to discuss their work with one another, and sometimes collaborated.His work began to pop up all over the globe. Shadowmen even appeared on the Berlin Wall in 1984, when he painted 17 life-size figures on its eastern side. His Shadowman paintings have been documented by photographer Hank O’Neal."(artpie.co.uk)

Richard Hambleton - Street Art.

"Richard Hambleton has been called the godfather of street art. He began producing what he called ‘public art’ in New York City in the 1970s.He’s known for the black figures he first painted on the buildings of New York’s Lower East Side, which he called Shadowmen. The Shadowmen arrived in the early 1980s, and shocked many a denizen of that city who walked the streets at night. In 1981 and 1982 he populated the Lower East Side with these unnerving figures.A reclusive man, physically gaunt (somewhat creepy-looking himself), Hambleton had undertaken work of a similar bent before. In his Mass Murder project in the late 1970s, he drew crime-scene outlines of dead bodies on the street and had volunteers play homicide victims. Passersby mistook the installations for the aftermaths of real murders.Both these projects spoke to the zeitgeist, as US urban crime panics shook the nation in those decades. The Shadow men would shock passersby, who often mistook them for shadows of real people, possible assailants. Many people who lived in NYC around that time have stories of the moment they were petrified by a Shadowman and these stories seem to be almost a badge of honour top the artist with a distinctly morbid streak. For Hambleton audience reaction was integral to the artwork itself.He said:“Other artists put their work on the city, but what I paint on the walls is only part of the picture. The city psychologically completes the rest. People experience my paintings. They aren’t simply exposed to them.”His art was apparently inspired by the shadows left on the sides of buildings by victims of the atomic blast on Hiroshima. In an age of Cold War anxiety, perhaps his work pointed at the way people’s lives seemed to rest on a knife edge.The Shadowmen drew in other urban artists, who daubed over the black figures with their own work. Indeed, Hambleton was not a lone wolf. With Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, he was one of a legendary trio of New York artists at the forefront of the street art boom. The three regularly met to discuss their work with one another, and sometimes collaborated.His work began to pop up all over the globe. Shadowmen even appeared on the Berlin Wall in 1984, when he painted 17 life-size figures on its eastern side. His Shadowman paintings have been documented by photographer Hank O’Neal."(artpie.co.uk)

Street art - Berlin - Germany - Kunsthaus Tacheles

The Kunsthaus Tacheles (Art House Tacheles) was an art center in Berlin, Germany, a large (9,000 m2 (97,000 sq ft)) building and sculpture park on Oranienburger Straße in the district known as Mitte. Huge, colorful graffiti-style murals are painted on the exterior walls, and modern art sculptures are featured inside. The building houses an artists collective which is threatened with eviction.
Originally called Friedrichsstadtpassagen, it was built as a department store in the Jewish quarter (Scheunenviertel) of Berlin, next to the synagogue. Serving as a Nazi prison for a short while, it was later partially demolished. After the Berlin Wall had come down, it was taken over by artists, who called it Tacheles, Yiddish for "straight talking". The building contained studios and workshops, a nightclub, and a cinema. Outside, the garden featured an open-air exhibition of metal sculptures as well as galleries and studios for sculptors and painters. A part of the garden still remains open to the public.
The house was finally closed on September 4, 2012. Tacheles Metallwerkstatt, the sculpture park, was open until March 2013, when the financial group Nordbank decided to make money out of it.Wikipedia

 

Street art Buenos Aires - Ever

Ever (real name Nicolás Romero), is a street art artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ever has been commissioned for works in Miami's Wynwood Walls street art district, and to paint a parking garage wall on Atlanta's Second Avenue as part of the Living Walls conference.
Ever began painting graffiti on his city's streets in the 1990s, starting with letter-based works. Since then, his work has evolved towards portraits of people, which Ever claimed is due to the influence of Gustav Klimt, Francis Bacon and Vincent van Gogh. Ever's preference is to paint ordinary people, based on photos he finds on the Internet, or people he sees on the streets, or simply his own brother. The "painterly" style of portraits is more typical of paintings found in a gallery than in street art. Ever uses both aerosol and brush-based techniques in his work.Wikipedia