#mural
Art the community tagged “mural” — see what people make of it.
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Sutton twin towns mural by Gary Drostle, 1993
These seven panels are said to be 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.
Erisava: Feels like something the council put up to tick a box.
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Wall of the Barcelona Airport by Joan Miró, 1970
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.
Erisava: I think if you took the name away, this would just read as airport decoration.
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Comets by Margareta Hennix, 1997
It's glazed tile set into the brickwork rather than paint, which is presumably how it's held up outdoors this long. I couldn't find much beyond that — not even why it's on this wall and not another. If anyone knows, I'd like the story.
Erisava: What's this actually for, up there on a brick wall?
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Wall of the Conferences and Exhibitions Palace of Madrid by Joan Miró, 1979
Palacio de Congresos · wikidata.org
This 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.
Erisava: This just looks like decoration to me — nice shapes to cheer up a dull building.
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Civilização Mineira by Candido Portinari, 1959
They say he painted a lot of these big public murals around Brazil — I couldn't track down the specific story behind this one, but it hangs in a government building in Minas Gerais.
Erisava: Is this supposed to be old Brazil or new Brazil crowding it out?
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Les formigues by Joan Salvat-Papasseit, 2004
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.
Erisava: Someone painted words on a wall and it counts as art. Graffiti gets scrubbed.
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Balcons de Barcelona by CitéCréation, 1992
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.
Erisava: It's a good trick. I'm not sure a good trick is enough.
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The History of the Old Kent Road by Adam Kossowski, 1964
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.
Erisava: There's a whole family dressed in buttons. Anyone know what that's about?
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Fresco at the United Nations gate in Geneva by Hans Erni, 2009
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.
Erisava: Everyone's for peace. What's a wall like this actually supposed to do?
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Mermaid by Disk, 2017
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.
Erisava: The hostel's name is painted right into it. Is this just an advert, then?
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Táin Bó Cúailnge by Desmond Kinney, 1974
The whole wall tells an old Irish epic — a war fought over a stolen bull, from what I've read, with a queen on one side and a teenage hero on the other.
Erisava: This much colour on a street wall, and it's free — museums charge for less.
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Mensch und Natur (Freizeit) by Achim Kircher, 1979
Whatever this looked like when it went up, decades of weather have worn it down to a faint charcoal sketch of itself.
Erisava: Is this still a mural, or has it faded past that point?
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Sleeping Boy by Maria Kudasheva, 2021
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.
Erisava: Asleep on a pile of books with a seagull on his head. Honestly, I am lost.
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Etnias by Eduardo Kobra, 2016
I couldn't turn up much about why this particular one exists, just that it's enormous.
Erisava: This must have cost a fortune to pull off.
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Witches' Sabbath by Francisco Goya, 1820
This wasn't made for anyone to see — he painted it straight onto a wall of his own house, in his seventies, deaf and unwell, and it only got peeled off and moved to canvas after he was gone. Nobody seems to agree on what he meant by it, or whether he meant anything at all.
Erisava: It's basically all brown mud — so why is it scaring me?
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La Madone de São Paulo by Inti, 2015
You'll come across this one in the Vale do Anhangabaú in São Paulo. The signature credits two street artists, and it shows - the delicate mechanical hand doesn't feel like the same one that painted the flowers.
Erisava: Feels like three different tattoos got crammed onto one wall.
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Modern Family by Okuda San Miguel, 2019
He is a Spanish painter who does these rainbow-geometry giants on buildings all over the world — Marzahn got one across a whole gable end.
Erisava: Being ten storeys tall doesn't make this good art, just hard to ignore.
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The Sea by Maria Keil, 1958
They say she was among the people who brought tile panels like this into Lisbon's modern public spaces, including designs for metro stations — this one apparently keeps to that same idea of turning a plain wall into something worth a second look.
Erisava: This feels more like fancy tiling than actual art.
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Unnamed mural by SCEB by Camilla Boström, 2017
Nothing on this one anywhere I looked — no story behind it, not even a proper name.
Erisava: Giant birds behind a car park, next to the bins. Curious if it means something