Sao Paulo Street Art

I've been meaning to write this story up for the Art Community for a long time and now that I am on the summer break and between the teaching assignments, I would like to present a case study I discuss with my public relations students when we get to government relations and visual culture.

Brazilian Sao Paulo, the largest city in the Americas, has been famous for its street art since 1980s. It is home to some of the most famous street artists who started out at the time, including the twins Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, better known to the rest of the world as OsGemeos. Many of the artists used street art as a form of protest against the oppressive non-democratic government practices, so the tradition of dissent in Brazilian street art is strong. I encourage anyone who is interested in this history to explore it on their own. You will find some fascinating facts and details there.

What I want to focus on in this story is the city government policy that propelled street art in Sao Paulo to new heights and levels. The Clean City Law of Jan.1, 2007 banned all outdoor advertising in Sao Paulo. No banners, neon signs, billboards - nothing that would cover the outdoor surfaces of the city, which has been traditionally using local construction materials of gray, yellow and white stone to create its unique architecture and color palette.

The city administration decided that all outdoor advertising was "visual pollution" overwhelming people with its visual over-stimulation and hiding the city's true architectural beauty. "Pollution" is the key word here explaining why the act is called the "Clean City Law." So, no outdoor advertising in any form. Businesses were allowed to only display their names and phone numbers on their outside spaces, such as above the main entrance.

In his 2011 documentary POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold the great late Morgan Spurlock (you might remember him from Supersize Me, the documentary that disrupted McDonalds) has a good explainer of the city policy and its rationale:

The most important outcome of the Clean City Law was that it turned the city of Sao Paulo into a huge canvas for street art. The artists seized on this opportunity and Sao Paulo quickly turned into one of the largest displays of street art in the world, propelling Brazilian artists into global fame and welcoming artists from all over the world to come and spill their ideas onto the city surfaces.

With the population of over 20 million people and unlimited sprawling space, Sao Paulo quickly became the world's capital of street art. I asked ChatGPT to rank the cities famous for their street art and here's a very subjective (we should not trust MAIK blindly) but nonetheless informative summary table showing SP at #1, ahead of Berlin, Melbourne, and other cities that are famous for their street art.

Here are some artists who made their name in Sao Paulo and graced its streets with their works. I'm going to cheat here a little and copy and paste my own PowerPoint presentation to save time and space. It's actually not cheating as I'm presenting my own work and many pictures I took on my 2018-2019 trip to Brazil, but it's double-dipping as we call it in academia. I don't recommend it for any other purposes.

1. Kobra

Arguably one of the most famous street artists in the world on par with Banksy, the holder of two Guinness world records for street art, Kobra is known for his colorful kaleidoscopic mosaic style. A native of Sao Paulo, he definitely left his mark on the city. He currently works with a team of artists who help him create new works and maintain the old ones as street art is fleeting and vulnerable to elements exposure.

Paulista Avenue, a major street with multiple lanes (including the pink bike lane in the center) is one of the major arteries in SP housing many of Kobra's works, usually on side walls of high-rise apartment buildings. The one above is the portrait of Oscar Niemeyer, a visionary Brazilian architect.

Here in a picture I lifted from the Internet Kobra is standing next to his Etnias Wall - a World Guinness Record holding mural in Rio he created for the 2016 Olympics to celebrate various ethnic groups representing Brazil. This mural was also recreated on the wall of a chocolate factory in Sao Paulo in even a longer version, to beat his own WG record.

Some more world-known works by Kobra: F1 racer Ayrton Senna's portrait on Paulista Ave., the rendition of The Thinker (I believe it's in Rio), and Kobra's social commentary on poverty in Brazil that the government tried to cover up by building tall walls around the poor districts - favelas - so that Olympic visitors could not see them.

Even though the top picture on this slide is not mine, it gives you a good idea of how long and beautiful the Etnias wall in SP is. If you would like to learn more about Kobra's work around the world, here's a great documentary about him and his team:

2. Mr. Peu

Mr. Peu is another SP street artist with a distinct comic-book animalistic style. His mission is to create art that covers the city blight and you will see his works in many poorest or neglected parts of the city. In the bottom right-hand picture, he just started to work on that large wall.

3. Lake

Street artist Lake's style is distinct in using horizontal orientation and spiral form of its characters. They are fun, whimsical and often spilling over the buildings and to the ground. They also pop up in unexpected places all over SP. When I walked around the city I was hoping to find more of them but unfortunately I came across only three.

4. Ignoto

Here is another master of surrealist cartoonish characters that spill over to the ground. It gives the observer a feeling that they'd step out of the mural to the real world. Really fun to come across.

Those were probably the most famous active SP street artists of our time. There's also a lot of unsigned, anonymous and not as sophisticated street art in San Paulo. This is the reflection of the democratic character of the city: It welcomes creativity of both the beginning, amateur and the established artists.

I hope you liked this little excursion with street art in Sao Paulo. I'm sure there's a lot more of it now, and some of the masterpieces featured here are probably gone or painted over. Again, due to the fleeting nature of street art I felt like providing this snapshot as a feature of both the time and the policies that allow street art to flourish.