the Fundación channel traces the history of urban art

When you got to the famous Kio Towers in Madrid, you came across various walls covered in graffiti. Classified works and dubious artistic quality (vomiting or bombs done quickly and with careful technique) that their authors told them to hide to avoid being fined.

Just enfrente, en la exhibition hall of the Fundación channelWith all the institutional roar, an exhibition is presented between the microphones and the horns, which traces the history of urban art 60 years ago.

This is the great paradox of street art, a secret practice that arose as an act of rebellion, non-conformism or simply expressing one’s self, which has been diversified and acquired a formal and conceptual sophistication that has not yet turned into what it is today: a recognized and appreciated art form, even commissioned by the authorities, encased in museums and sold for outrageous sums.

The most paradigmatic case is de Banksyhen of golden hues street artto which he devotes himself a large room with 14 screen prints on paperincluding the famous little girl who lost or died with a heart-shaped globe. There’s also a piece that represents the essence of the piece that reads “I can’t believe you imbeciles really got this shit”, referring to your own games with the art market that you’ve been benefiting from since you started it.

Exhibition titled Urban art. From the beginnings to Banksywhich was commissioned by the art historian Patrizia Cattaneo Moresi, director of Artrust (Switzerland) and can be visited free of charge until May 3.

New museum more than 60 original works of some of the most influential names in international urban art, from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to SEEN, Blek le Rat, JR, Invader, Obey y Os Gêmeos, alongside Spanish figures such as SUSO33, El Xupet Negre or PichiAvo.

Everyone wrote the history of urban art in the place where it belongs: on the street. What we see on the walls of the museum are the works that come from them, supported like sheets or paper. The value of the exhibition is therefore rooted in the presentation of original works that give us an idea of ​​their technique, style and themes, but this emphasis prevents us from presenting the history of urban art in their context (which can only be done with photographs of their street works).

Pioneers

The first room goes back to the beginnings of graphite with artwork pioneers like TAKI 183a man from New York who has been bombarding the city with his signature since the late 1960s, compulsively painting all kinds of surfaces in the subway and on the streets with his rotator and stirring up articles in it The New York Timeswhich created a multiplier effect so that hundreds of young people began to imitate them by printing their own signatures.

This form of expression was, in the words of the museum’s curator, art historian Patrizia Cattaneo Moresi, a way of exclaiming: “I exist, escúchenme”. So, “el writing (the act of writing the name or alias of the author) has not yet been born with an artistic intention spontaneous reaction to invisibility: a gesture of symbolic ownership of urban space in front of the city that denied representation to large groups of its population”.

También puede verse un lienzo de SEEN, known as the “godfather of graphite” for sus whole carspintadas que cubrían cars from extreme to extreme; as well as other pioneering works such as Crash, PoemOne or Quik. Most are undated or very recent, reflecting the jumps from the streets to the galleries.

This transition began to take place from the season seven finale and throughout the second half of the season. The persistence of anti-graffiti policies and subway clean-up campaigns forces many artists to move to galleries and alternative spaces such as Fashion Moda or PS1.

There are also key characters in this context Jean-Michel Basquiat or Keith Haring, who translate the languages ​​of the call into the institutional space without giving up its critical, political and popular dimension. It works like a lithograph Supercomb Basquiat or Haring’s Cartel for the Montreux Jazz Festival exemplify this moment when graffiti became a fringe practice to establish itself as a recognized art form.

The museum occupies a large area influence of graphite in Europe It is a specifically European reformulation of urban art, strongly marked by the weight of history and memory in public space. From the Berlin Wall as a political lie to the Parisian street scene with pioneers like Blek le Rat or Miss.Tic.

Graffiti in Spain

In the Spanish case, the exhibition traces the journey from the excitement of the Madrid movement to the consolidation of its own languages ​​in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. SUSO33present in the museum, evokes logic brands into a performative and conceptual dimension with his famous silhouettes and projects like i-Legalwho reflect on the border of legality and illegality.

in Barcelona, El Xupet Negre assumes el branding urban with its iconic chupe, transformed into a recognizable symbol and vehicle of anti-racist messages. This was the first graffiti I saw in my life Commentator, writer and illustrator Carlota Juncosa, who recently published comics You had ideas (Reservoir Books) talks about his relationship with this art form when he was a teenager.

For one thing, a duo from Valencia PichiAvo it combines graffiti, classicism and figuration to honor the Greco-Latin deities of the museum and transfer them on a monumental scale to the city walls.

Sections devoted to evolution since 2000 focus on hybridization of techniques and discussionsfrom post-graffiti to el sticker art hasta practices that directly affect the surface of buildings, such as the murals created by VHILS taladrando el concreteas an impressive portrait of the singer Cesária Évora in Cabo Verde.

Art or vandalism?

So you can continue working on the cutters. There is an endless stream of irreverent politeness in private property or in the statue of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, with murals that silence the alien and beautify the public space and invite reflection. But this front is not always clear and is occupied by the last room of the exhibition, which aims to educate the visitor between what is art and what is vandalism.

Examples of the first: the Madrid Swipe mural in the Feme building, A Coruña, where there is a young person playing the cello (chosen as the best mural in the world in 2024 on the Street Art Cities platform); another mural by JR on Franklin Street in New York featuring a ballet dancer; what Keith Haring created in 1989 in the church of Sant’Antonio Abate in Pisa, Italy, the restoration of which was supported by the old neighbors of the city; or the one that adorns the Paco de Lucía metro station in Madrid, created by Rosh33 and Okuda.

Examples of the latter: a 12th-century statue of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela that looked painted as if it were the musician Kiss; the “Aliens Exist” painting in the Roman Pantheon; and attached in subway cars, garage doors and houses.

The work that surrounds the exhibition is the work of “urban visual poetry” by SUSO33, one of the authors of the favorite urban artists, who embodies perfection and the transition from secret to official, from marginal to mainstream.

As your creator explained, this piece has a title I-Legal (2004) invites us to think about legality, illegality and illegality in street art, the turbulent terrain in which many of our works move. The artist created a piece on the wall of a man leaving the table. When you remove this table and place it on a museum wall, the work becomes legal.

It is a debate “that does not seek a specific response, but rather stimulates critical reflection. At what point should an intervention in a public space be considered an act of vandalism? Or, conversely, why do certain interventions deserve to be considered art?”.

Some of the photographs displayed outside the gallery above the exhibition hall as examples of vandalism are not very different from the graffiti seen from the outside. They are also very different from those early graffiti artists who were defined in the first room as a “gesture of self-determination” and a “creative, social and cultural act”. Let us ask you again that what we call vandalism today is exhibited in a museum.