The Municipality of Athens, an active supporter of Contemporary Art in urban landscapes, has introduced an innovative public murals program with absolute respect for public spaces.
The program, part of a three-year Cultural Project of the Municipality of Athens, is implemented in collaboration with the UrbanAct team and various street artists who have been offered specific urban spaces to create their works.
In 2021, the murals will decorate four schools in Athens. They are dedicated to the 200th Anniversary of the Greek War of Independence, hence the program’s subtitle “From the Roots to the Sky”.
The artists draw inspiration from personalities of the arts and letters of the past 200 years.
The first work was created at the 104th Primary School of Athens at the junction of Larissa and Panormou streets by the Greek street artist Kez, who chose to develop an adaptation of the well-known work by our famous painter Theophilos (Hadjimichael), Erotokritos and Arethusa.
As he stated: “Theophilos as a self-taught folk painter has a close relationship with street art, whose artists are traditionally self-taught. In a sense, street art is contemporary folk art.”
By the end of the year, the remaining three murals will be painted in schools of the Municipality of Athens by street artists Gera, Same84, and Leonidas Giannakopoulos.
Valuable helpers of street artists are Flame and Vechro, a Greek paint companies. The communication sponsor is Lifo.
In the coming years, the Municipality of Athens will open up the program to private individuals, who will be invited, if they wish, to offer their buildings as a canvas for street art.
All murals will be realized “live”. The public will be able to follow the mural creation process and interact with the artist.
“Starting from the city’s schools, we wish to transform the urban landscape with artistic interventions that will give Athens a touch of beauty and liveliness, with absolute respect for the public space and its aesthetics.
With the help of UrbanAct and its many years of experience in street art, we are creating cultural conditions for essential artistic interaction, shaping the cultural map with a contemporary visual perspective for the residents and visitors to the city,” said the Mayor of Athens Kostas Bakoyannis.
Web:www.cityhall.gr