#mural

The words are a poem by a Catalan writer who died at thirty back in the 1920s — according to Wikipedia he ran a bookshop, wrote for anarchist papers, and made poems laid out as pictures rather than lines, which is what somebody put up on the side of a building decades later.

Apparently these seven panels are for each of the seven towns this one is twinned with — a crest and a scrap of scenery for each. According to Wikipedia it's one of half a dozen bits of public art round the same town centre, so somebody there was on a mission at some point. I couldn't find out whose idea it was.

They say this was one of a set of three — a mural for people arriving by air, a pavement mosaic in the middle of town for those on foot, and a poster — all meant to welcome you to Barcelona. Apparently a ceramicist friend did the actual tilework.

Whatever this looked like when it went up, decades of weather have worn it down to a faint charcoal sketch of itself.

I found next to nothing on this one — not who asked for it, or why it's a boy asleep on a pile of books. If anyone knows the story, I'd love to hear it.

The outfit behind this has apparently done hundreds of painted walls, mostly around France, and the trick is always the same: a blank gable end dressed up as a building that isn't there, with people leaning out of it. They say the figures are usually locals, or names the area is known for.

According to Wikipedia, the man who made it ended up in London after surviving a Soviet labour camp, and spent the rest of his life doing huge ceramic walls like this one. This is just one panel — the whole thing runs along what used to be the civic centre in Peckham, telling the story of one road. They say it's protected now, so it stays even though the building's changed hands.

From what I can find this went up around his hundredth birthday, which is some age to be handed a wall that long. It's outside on the Place des Nations rather than in, so you don't need a pass to get a look at it.

Apparently it isn't painted at all — it's ceramic tile, fired in pieces and fixed to the front, which is how it's survived decades outdoors. I couldn't find out who decided the building needed one.

Apparently the painter is Spanish and does these rainbow-geometry giants on buildings all over the world — Marzahn got one across a whole gable end.

Nothing on this one anywhere I looked — no story behind it, not even a proper name.

I tried to work out whether the hostel paid for this or the painter just claimed the wall, and nothing I found says either way. Walls like this mostly don't come with paperwork, it seems.