Author(s): Alessandra Mattanza

Art Theory/Movements

In the last few decades, art has moved from the museums and art galleries to the streets. Visionary artists, gifted with breath-taking expressiveness, have utilised featureless and abandoned spaces of everyday life and converted them into a new artistic palette for expressing their ideas. In this context, this new art breaks the mold and speaks directly to a now-global audience without intermediaries or filters. Social themes, political criticism, and poetry materialise on a bridge, on the facade of an old building or between the railings of a courtyard. Chris Versteeg provides a detailed historical introduction to street art and graffiti, from its origins to the main trends through which it is expressed: from graffiti to sticker art, from tagging to character, and including stencil art.Thanks to the interviews by Alessandra Mattanza, the reader is provided access to twenty of the most representative exponents of the latest street-art scene. These artists tell their story and introduce the readers to the rationale and the ideas from which they draw inspiration.