Berlin Street Art: Familiar Faces

I know I've been talking about street art a lot, and this is probably one of the last cities where it's popular enough that I'll write much about it. Since everything has been a bit piecemeal so far, I'm going to try to do a group of posts that give a more thorough look at street art in general, but using what I see in Berlin as the main driver. I might reference some other art I've seen along the way as well.

One of the things I like about the street art scene is slowly getting to recognize different artists, and then finding their work in different cities. Berlin is a great example of this, and even though I've only really talked about a couple of artists, people who have actually bothered reading my street art posts would be able to recognize quite a bit of what's in Berlin.

Clet Abraham's art is pretty unique, so it stands out a lot. Since I first saw his stuff in his home of Florence I've come across his signs in 4 different cities. Now I wonder if he simply didn't have any in cities like Paris or London, or if I just never thought to look closely at signs before.

Alice Pasquini of Rome also does a lot of travelling, and I've come across her stencils in quite a few places, but London, Rome and Berlin have had the most. With the notable exception of her mural wall in Rome she tends to favour discrete, out of the way niches for her stencils, which makes them a bit more challenging to find. As you can see in these pictures the graffiti is starting to swallow them up a bit, so they were done awhile ago.

I've seen a few paintings that have Knarf's style in the city, but none of them are signed. This one, at least, I'm pretty confident in, since it has his style of art along with one of his signature hearts.

Belgian artist Roa always stands out. Not only does he always paint (often dead) native animals in black and white, but he tends to paint them big. I was really excited when I saw this mural, as it's the largest and most animal-diverse piece I've seen of his.

I think those are most of the artists I've spoken much about that I've seen in the city. There are Shepard Fairey stencils and stickers around, as always, but I don't know if he does them himself or others do on his behalf because they are so iconic. Over the next few days I'm going to do posts on most of the major types of street art (painting, paste-ups, stencils, sculptures, stickers and murals) and explain a bit more about what they are, give some local examples, and hopefully communicate a bit of why I'm so interested in it all.