Athens speaks the international language of street art – Innovative graffiti technique in Gazi by the Italian artist Demetrio Di Grado

demetrio di grado

The art of graffiti is brought to the capital by the Municipality of Athens, which is providing, for the first time, designated public spaces for Greek and foreign street artists to create and express themselves and interact with the city and its inhabitants in an aesthetic and artistic context.

The new pioneering intervention in the park located in Thessalonikis Street, in Gazi, opposite the Technopolis, is part of the public murals program, a collaboration of the Municipality of Athens, the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens, and UrbanArt.

In Thessalonikis Street, a pedestrian street transformed into an artistic canvas, the Italian artist Demetrio Di Grado has introduced his inspired creation.

Demetrio Di Grado is from Sicily and has been involved in street art for years, combining the collage technique with the art of murals. “Street Collage” has made Demetrio one of the most recognizable and active artists in the Italian scene.

His work, which was completed a few days ago, is part of the still unpublished series “Starting from the End”.

In this series, anthropogenic and architectural landscapes in which men, women and children alternate, give shape to other faces and create new connections, constantly in a close and sometimes dramatic confrontation with the most contemporary issues of society related to the environment, politics and the future.

As the visual curator, Francesco Piazza says, “this is architecture so absurd that excites, paradoxically causing a short circuit between what we live and what we have lived, a time loop in which everything repeats itself in different forms, expressing the truth, always creating new and surprising combinations, reaching a synthetic purity that justifies his literary approach and his gaze towards a world to be rebuilt”.

“This project, and other similar ones supported by our Culture Program, will link Athens to contemporary art forms. We want a vibrant, creative city that will attract creators and give young Athenians and those who feel Athenians the opportunity to enhance their cosmopolitanism. At the same time, we strongly support the culture and status of the city, putting an end to aesthetic vandalism with coordinated anti-graffiti interventions. We say yes to colour and art, no to scribbling and the abuse of public space”, commented the Mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis, in a statement.

Web: www.cityofathens.gr

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