Talking about graffiti in southern Europe or anywhere else in the world is still directly related to vandalism. However, there is a collective of professional graffiti artists in Madrid that has known how to take advantage of its evolution, the so-called 'street art', to decorate incomparable architectural spaces throughout the entire Spanish geography. Incorporating urban art into architecture.

What would be the different points of view to be able to dismiss this artistic movement as art, or on the contrary, as an illegal creative industry?

I will focus on the success story of several Spanish artists who have risen to fame in our country thanks to their multicolored decorations.
His creations on architecture embellish public and private properties of different types and economic value. In this sense, several properties on the coast and inland have seen how the cadastral value rose thanks to the designs made mostly with plastic paint and spray cans,

Street art as a tool for controlling time and space. Urban art in architecture.

First of all, I would like to mention an artistic collective from Madrid called Boa mistura. Their stage of emerging artists began while they interspersed their work with music. But the number of commissions grew and now they are exclusively dedicated to the world of urban art.

They carry out their work both in Spain and outside our borders and it is common to see them work with different studios and schools of architects. An example of this was the collaboration they made in 2018 with the ETSAM, Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, within the master's degree Ephemera. 

In the words of the artists themselves about their 450 m2 work on the first floor of the building: “Reflection connects us with the“ PLACE ”in which we are and the“ TIME ”with the way of materializing the work. We reflect from the memory of the place and materialize it according to our time. "

The new formats of Art Deco in architecture

For Antonio Martínez Estevan, contemporary artist from Alicante better known as Antonyo Marest. Architecture can be directly linked to the use of new techniques and creative contexts (See urban art as a form of expression).

Besides, the mediterranean influence of this young man characterizes all his artistic interventions. Use a mix of vivid colors and abstract tone creations that include but are not limited to ripples and fluids. That generate harmonious forms almost impossible to catalog. 

Thanks to his university training as an architect, Marest is able to integrate street art into the urban landscape From any city. He is one of the Spanish artists who shows interest in the recovery of natural spaces. This is identifiable in his work when he adds flowers or palm trees as "columns".

Beyond residential architecture and decorative interior design

Finally, I will talk about the creator who has generated the greatest success in the past 10 years within the Spanish art scene. He is Oscar San Miguel Erice, an artist from Santander residing in Madrid and internationally known as Okuda.

I mention it since the project titled 'I am Titans' was developed in the province of Ciudad Real around the industrial architecture. More specifically, both he and his creative team and another series of graffiti artists decorated several silos in the Castilla La Mancha area.

As you can see, it is a new way of taking advantage of large buildings and transforming them into pure works of art in the open air. Could we then define them as'mega-canvases' that form a museum of unfinished modern art?