Just before Christmas I took a trip to Málaga and stayed at the Room Mate Lola, smack dab in the centre of the new Soho district, which turned out to be an excellent location for getting around. The “Barrio de las Artes”, once a dodgy area of town, has been transformed into a bohemian rhapsody of street art with international artists being invited to add their creations to the walls of the neighbourhood buildings. Somehow I missed getting a photo of the two biggies – massive murals just behind the Contemporary Arts Museum put up by D´Face and Obey – but you can see them here at East of Málaga.
My favourite is the chameleon by ROA, and below you can see some others that I liked. Click on any image to enlarge and begin slideshow…
As much as I like the new Soho, it feels a bit like doing things backwards. “Traditionally” in most urban areas you’d get artists taking over low rent places filled with the usual array of drug addicts, prostitutes and other ne’er do wells, and as they upped the “trendy” the middle class would start moving in and jacking up property prices, eventually pushing the artists out to start the cycle over again elsewhere. But this Soho is a government promoted project, with “street art” being commissioned by city hall, creating an artificial boho feel to the area, which is pleasant to look at but yet feels somewhat contrived. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
Nice post, Shawn! I love ROA…always kills it. All the pictures are great as well.
Thanks Ryan. So many pics I didn’t get, and many of them are no longer “clearly visible” due to parked cars in front of them. Or just being in odd places.
No sweat…the beauty of street art is that it’s always changing and there’s always something new to see.
I also just posted about this on http://freshism.com
Permalink/post link: http://freshism.com/2014/01/street-art-in-malaga-spain-a-photo-essay-by-azahar-sevilla/
Lovely photos. My favourite is ROA’s chameleon, too!
Thanks for the link, Shawn 🙂
these are brilliant…really love the first one
Great pictures Shawn! pity you missed the Obey and D*Face ones – we got some of it on film – http://www.spain-holiday.com/Malaga-city/articles/urban-street-art-in-malaga – hope you like it!!
That’s fantastic, thanks for sharing it. I’ll post it up on our freshism blog (freshism.com) in a few days. We’re big fans of D*Face over here.
Thanks Ryan, looking forward to it. Let me know if we can help at all.
Will do!
It’s posted at http://freshism.com/
Permalink: http://freshism.com/2014/01/video-of-dface-and-shepard-fairey-at-spain-holiday/
Thanks, Shawn and John!
Hi John,
I didn’t miss the Obey and D*Face ones, just didn’t get a photo. From what I understand, one was painted and one was pre-painted and then assembled.
The murals both were painted not pre-painted.
Regards
Hi Shawn,
I think they used some form of stencil (that was assembled) and then painted over it