A Book tells of 40 years of research into the graffiti artists in Bahia
“A Arte na Rua” (Art in the street) proposes the insertion of graffiti artists into society
On one hand the great public and private monuments, on the other, the art that resists preconceptions and other barriers imposed by public powers. During the ‘Salvador Grafita” period, when graffiti artists were hired, offering them a salary to beautify our city, supported by the City of Salvador, the art was able to spread into various locations in the capital, transforming it into a showcase, demonstrating different forms of expression, from simple tags and scribbles to elaborate panels of graffiti art. Even if the general public remained largely indifferent to both the subject and its artistic manifestation, people nonetheless observed the giant panels that these unknown artists produced, and in the long run, their art succeeded in transmitting their messages and their ideology. This is the story of exactly 37 years of research, from the 1980s to the present, cataloging and recording numerous images that create a portrait of the graffiti artists’ art forms, from tags, scrawls and squiggles, graffiti, stencils and “bombs,” making a compendium of techniques applied to walls, plywood panels and cliff rocks, on surfaces both public and private.
The book “A arte na rua” (Art in the Street), by José Francisco Paranaguá Guimarães, will be presented in Salvador on May 5th at 8 PM, at the Institute of Culture Brazil Italy Europe (ICBIE), in rua Porto dos Tainheiros, 36 in Ribeira.
The event is open to the public and has as its main objective to recognize the importance of street art, and to solicit public attention, to appreciate the value of this art and the involvement of these artists in the construction of a city that is visibly more vibrant. The book offers a panorama stretching from the end of the 1980s, through a detailed research, including testimonials, writings and nascent graffiti by pioneers such as Faustino, Badalação, ML (Muito Louco), Mancha, Grupoema, Kaos, BL (Boca Livre), and continuing with the production of Pinel – one of the best known graffiti artists in the city – and his followers, up until the present panorama, with crews of artists such as the Esquadrão de Grafiteiros de Salvador (EGS), Coletivo Nova10Ordem, Calangos, Oclan andToque Feminino (TF), to cite a few, as well as well known artists such as Bel Borba, Leonel Mattos, Gustavo Moreno, Paulo Mello, etc.
Paranaguá highlights the importance of inserting these artists in the context of a direct collaboration with the city. “The City used to have a project that economically remunerated artists for their work. How many walls of schools could be decorated with graffiti? I think the public administration needs to confront this problem,” says Pinel, one of the artists cited in the book, to reflect upon the persecutions that this category of artists are forced to face. “The oppression always came mainly from the public administration, that had no understanding of the art and no ability to distinguish between graffiti and vandalism. Today, not all areas are free to graffiti art. In some places, we can be punished for environmental crimes, because the present administration has delimited the spaces for the artists. A resident cannot authorize a graffiti painting on the wall of his own house, without authorisation by the City, and otherwise it is considered as an environmental crime,” he says.The book is published by the Editrice Pinauna. The presentation of the book forsees also a limited free distribution of some examples of the work, along with the presence of numerous artists who are part of the book.
Author: Danúbio Trindade DRT: 4567/BA
