Tracing its roots back to the graffiti boom of the 1960s, street art – and particularly the large, bold, colourful street murals you see on building exteriors – has now spread to virtually every city on the planet. Some town authorities commission them, while others are exasperated by the unofficial ones which occasionally spring up over night. But in the end, as the murals become firmly lodged in the fabric of the cities they adorn, local residents, tourists and even art critics grow to love them.
- My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, by Dmitri Vrubel, Berlin, Germany After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel painted this image of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker – ex-leaders of the Soviet Union and East Germany – embracing in a fraternal kiss on the wall’s eastern side. null
- Faith In Women, by Lady Pink , Minneapolis, USA Street art has historically been a male-dominated world – but plenty of women have made their mark, too. Lady Pink is an Ecuadorean-American artist who, in 2005, created this anti-war protest. null
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- Factory Worker, by Alexandre Farto Hong Kong, China Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, aka Vhils, does not paste or paint to create his street art; instead he chisels and chips, stripping away layers of walls to create large-scale bas-relief images. In 2015, he applied his technique in Hong Kong to create a portrait of a female factory worker on the exterior of a local textiles plant, now an arts centre. null
- Nobody Likes Me, by iHeart Vancouver, Canada Canadian artist iHeart never intended for his mural – a satire of social media – to become so famous. “There’s almost too much irony that happened with this piece,” he said. “Posting it on Instagram, Facebook, my website, and Twitter, then it going viral. Basically the idea behind the piece completely backfired.” null
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- We The Youth, by Keith Haring Philadelphia, USA Pop artist Keith Haring pioneered street art in the subways of New York in the early 1980s. By 1987, his chalk drawings were world-famous. This mural in the Point Breeze neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was created together with high-school students in September 1987, and is the only one of Haring’s collaborative murals to remain in its original location – despite the fact it was intended to be temporary. null
Bammer image: Faith In Women, by Lady Pink