Stencils, wheat-pastes, and fevered texts by hand – they all are speaking to you in Valencia. Here in Spain, the pandemic has canceled Pamplona’s bull-running festival and Seville’s Holy Week procession. This month Valencia’s Fallas festival was held in the strictest of rules.
Thank God we all still have graffiti and street art! This week we have BSA contributing photographer Lluis Olive Bulbena sharing a few late summer beauties from his short trip to Valencia.
These days it is the default storyline of a non-British arts journalist to deign that their local street artist is “Tel Aviv’s Banksy”, or “Wanaka’s Banksy”. Here in Madrid, this artist just calls himself Banksy’s cousin, or at least that could be one interpretation of his artistic name.
Primo Banksy is a trained artistic talent and uses his carefully rendered ink and watercolor illustrations to highlight cultural figures in art, politics, literature – like John & Yoko, the girl from the Velázquez’ Las Meninas, or this portrait of Federico García Lorca, the poet, playwright, and theater director.
Meanwhile the street artist known as TVBoy is much closer in style and sentimentality to the Bristol-born street art man of mystery known around the world. The Barcelona based Italian favors the pop side of so-called “urban art” here, his filter treatments of popular figures a sure hit for passersby who relate to the subject.
Our thanks to BSA reader Ricardo Hernandez who shares with
us some recent shots while strolling the streets of Madrid.