Walking Buenos Aires is more than anything a travel through an architectural wonderland, seeing the abundance of majestic buildings from decades of neoclassicism mixed with French and Italian Renaissance architecture. But nowadays, a visiter can’t help but notice the numerous colorful murals, both abandoned buildings, bins, signs, rolling shutters and side walls are decorated with graffiti reflecting the vibrant urban art culture. In fact, Buenos Aires is listed as one of the top cities in the world to see street art, according to Fodor’ s Travel and the Huffington Post. The laws on doing graffiti are rather facile, no authorization from the city government is needed, and the artists are normally allowing to paint if the owner of the building agrees to it. Even politicians and city government hire street art artists to make their own street propaganda. Actually, it was politicians starting it when paying artists to bring their slogans to walls in the 1950s Buenos Aires. Later, it is said that the artist painted in protest of the unskilled politicians, thought the dark days of the military dictatorship lasting from 1974 to 1983 effectively cutoff all types of freedom of speech, when kidnapping and killing between 20 000 and 30 000 people.
The evident beginning of the street art movement is traced back to the 1960s in New York City, first peaking 20 years later with subway trains murals in the Bronx. In Argentina, the politics of President Carlos Menem pegged the value of the peso to the dollar, making it possible for more Argentinians to travel to cities with street art like New York and Barcelona. In 1994 one of the first recognized street artists Alfredo “Pelado” Segatori started to paint in Buenos Aires, later holding the record for the longest mural in Argentina with a painting of 2000 meters squared. The politics of the President, however, lead to the sufferings and devastating Argentinean economic crisis in 2001. Having said that, the capitals graffiti scene bloomed in the aftermath. Artists took to the streets putting color on a bleak and grisly city with high unemployment and its poverty-stricken citizens “as a social experiment to see how people would react to it, because at the time there was propaganda and negativity, and anger”, Jonny Robson in Graffitimundo, which offers graffiti-tours in BA, told The Buenos Aires Herold in 2013. He added that painting giant colorful characters was the most “apolitical thing” the artists could do, and that it was “just a very different way of dealing with economic hardship”.
As of today, Buenos Aires has a reputation os one of the street art capitals of the world, attracting foreign artists, hosting international street art festivals, and being a tourist attraction with plenty of companies offering tours. Yet the best thing is that these stunning pieces of urban art are to be find in every neighborhood, from Palermo, Villa Crespo, Colegiales and Chacarita in the north, to San Telmo and La Boca in south.
Enjoy the the free art gallery forever changing, but also serving as a ever-present reminder of the history of Argentina.
Hilda Nyfløt
