What is Street Art?

“ Street Art, or urban art, is a contemporary artistic movement. It is all forms of art produced in the street or in public places and encompasses various methods such as graffiti, stencil graffiti, stickers, posters, video projection, light installations, ceramics , etc ” definition taken from the artistic guide reference platform.

Street Art and Hip-Hop: Graffiti as an origin

To understand the origin of Street Art, you must first understand the history of contemporary Graffiti. Indeed, the art of Graffiti quickly established itself as a planetary artistic phenomenon. Nowadays, we can observe Graffiti in every corner of our streets and this across the 4 continents. This popular art has developed its roots within the Hip-Hop culture, in the same way as Break-Dance, Rap and the Mix of vinyl records.

Graffiti-Writing, Cornbread precursor

It was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and more precisely at the end of the 60s that graffiti artists like Cool Earl and Cornbread made their first graffiti. FYI, it was Cornbread, in 1965 who, in love with a girl his age, Cynthia Custuss, decided to declare his love for her by painting “ Cornbread Loves Cynthia” on the walls of the school in his neighborhood. This message is then listed as one of the first Graf of modern times.

In the mid-1970s, the movement quickly took off in New York. Thousands of spray-painted names appear on media still little known in the past: mailboxes, telephone booths, buildings, tunnels, buses and finally on the legendary metro trains.

In Europe, the Punk culture had spread widely and deservedly. It was when the track "Planet rock" by Afrika Bambaataa (founder of Hip Hop and the Zulu Nation), exploded and it became a planetary hit and New York graffiti artists were invited to exhibit their work in the European art galleries. It was at this same time that the Rock Steady Crew Breakdancers began their tour. Hip Hop and Graffiti were disseminated by the media which echoed the advent of a new popular culture. Graffiti and Hip Hop literally exploded and gradually became globalized over the years.