Street Art Europe: Discover Europe's vibrant urban art scene

I already wrote a lot about the urban art festival Crimes of Minds, taking place in the beautiful city of Brest, France. Nonetheless, there is still a lot I haven’t featured yet. For that reason, I’ll hereby give you a more extensive overview about what happened during the last months Crimes of Minds… Crimes of Minds - The Festival Organised by well-known graffiti artist Liliwenn, Crimes of Minds started about a year ago with Best Ever and Ben Slow painting in the streets, went on with Morten Andersen, Fin DAC and Sly 2 and included the famous Da Mental Vaporz crew creating a fantastic mural! Since then a lot happened and Brest got more and more colorful. ...

The Street Knowledge Agency, representers of author and content auteur King Adz, recently uploaded a half-hourly documentary about stencil art pioneer Blek Le Rat, whose 20 years old Madonna street artwork in Leipzig lately got preserved! As Crackajack.de mentioned, it’s probably the video from the outsold Blek Le Rat - Original Stencil Pioneer DVD by Gestalten. If anyone knows whether this is true, I would be pleased about a short comment… Street art has evolved and every major stencil artist today, most famously Banksy, have been influenced by Blek’s unique style. Bansky claims, “every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well, only twenty years earlier…” ...

It’s going to be hot in Amsterdam later this month, when several popular urban artists like Toast, Besok, Graphic Surgery, ECB, Morten Andersen and Bonzai catch up at the international urban art exhibition Urban Art EFX, presented by Urban Stylistics! *The exhibition themed “from urban to contemporary” showcases an eclectic variety of artwork. These range from paintings, sculptures, installations, photography to video art, created by key-players of the contemporary Urban Art movement. It highlights a snap-shot of their current artistic development as well as the story behind an up-and-coming artist generation, whose roots lay in the Graffiti and Street-art culture. ...

Wow, I’m totally flashed - Portuguese hero and artist of destruction Alexandre Farto aka Vhils just redesigned one of the oldest concrete blocks in Lisbon! In Eixo Norte-Sul, a district in Portugal’s capital, Vhils added parts of a face onto the facade of an abandoned concrete tower. Right next to the motorway, it’s now attracting people’s attention… For Vhils, who visited California and Shanghai before, it’s one of the first stops at home for a while. Hope to see some more new works of him in Europe in near future! ...

I’m a big fan of French urban artist and adbuster Ox, who should definitely not be a stranger for you! Being busy for the last years, Ox created his billboard takeover artworks, adapting their environment in amusing way, all over the globe… Recently he wrote from the nice French city of Angers, where he did his best for the Artaq urban art festival. Again I have to say, that his paintings, imitating for example certain bus and tram designs, really work out! ...

Is Pasha 183 (also P183) the Russian Banksy? Since January, the international urban art scene debates about this controversial question… P183 is a Moscow born and based multi media artist, whose work has recently received international coverage and acclaim. On January 31, 2012 the British Guardian published an online post about Moscow’s Banksy and his street art and started in that way an worldwide media campaign including internet-wide discussions about whether the British are going to declare each and every urban hacktivist or public intervention artist as a new Banksy… ...

Blu - Europe Border Europe is a fortress, you can read that thesis almost everywhere at any time. It describes Europe’s border politics as backward-looking, inhuman and as a mass violation of human rights. Recently, one of the world’s most famous mural artists Blu, who became famous with his critical, questioning paintings around the globe, picked up on this border policy with his latest mural in Melilla, Spain! ...

Imagine a total usual small town somewhere in the heart of Europe (in Belgium actually), a average quiet square with a big red push button and a sign with the text Push to add drama inviting people to use the button. And now watch and… …just think WTF?! ...

Martin Hawkes and his video team filmed famous German urban art duo Herakut while painting a pretty nice mural in Stavanger on the west coast of Norway! The mural, which shows a girl and a couple of monkey in that popular mixture style of photo-realistic graffiti and damn rough painting, was part of the Nuart Festival and was built in 2011… Nuart is an annual international contemporary street and urban art festival established in 2001. From the first week of September an invited international team of street artists start to leave their mark on the city’s walls, both indoor and out, creating one of Europe’s most dynamic and constantly evolving public art events. (about Nuart) ...

Already some days old, but still fresh is the dope, quality interview the VNA team did with The London Police boys in Amsterdam for the 17th issue of London’s finest Very Nearly Almost magazine! At first it was a very simple doodle. And I mean simple, it was essentially a stick man with a round head that I’d draw…(Chaz about the Lad) Chaz and Bob are present in Europe’s street art scene for over a decade. Together this duo traveled the globe, decorating streets not just in Europe, but also in Brooklyn, Hong Kong and other places, for what reason their iconic, fat outlined character (simply called the Lad) became popular around the world! And now, enjoy this The London Police interview! ...