Today we go to Polinyà, about 45 km from Barcelona, Spain, to visit the site of a historic summer country house. Built during the 1900s, “within the so-called Catalan modernism,” says Lluis Olive, the home was inhabited by the Marti family in this municipality of 8,389 until about 10 years ago when it became a restaurant. According to a description in Wikipedia, “The façades have, within Italianate lines, symmetry and consistency in the design of openings and moldings used for framing balconies and windows at the top.”
Unfortunately, the restaurant venture didn’t succeed for long and the property became empty. You KNOW what happens next in this story. However, you may not guess that the artist Fullet Original hoped to help find a new buyer by filling all the rooms of the house with graffiti and mural art.
According to Olive, who shares his photos with BSA readers here today, Fullet carried “out a project that he had dreamed of many times.” His friend has purchased the property, plans to hold an alternative market in it, and “last weekend about 15 artists were painting practically all of the spaces,” says Olive. The rooms were flooded with light and aerosol and lively conversation as the former farmhouse came alive in January with so many artists and friends.
The cross-section of styles are indicative of tastes of the moment in Spain and should be finished within a week or two. Which is good timing because “the opening of the market is scheduled for March.”
One of the most active artists in the streets creating in a variety of styles of work that lean toward realism and sometimes tilt into fantasy and exaggerated caricature the London born Waknine decided to do this mural on Selva de Mar to speak to the pure human factors in a refugee crisis that grips much of the developed and developing world.
The new work captures the raw human emotions of fear, desperation and distress of people afloat on rough waters. Somehow Waknine also brings dignity to the harrowing scene and references classical painting, as he has on walls in his travels to countries like Mexico, France, Israel, Germany, and England.
As some societies open their doors to help those fleeing war and imminent danger it seems unthinkable to do anything less for the least of these.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
