Los Muros Hablan: The Walls Speak

"Muralism has become one of the largest artistic and cultural movements in the history of the art world.

The art form is very democratic. Anyone who wants to express themselves can leave their mark so future generations can enjoy their artistry. Los Muros Hablan seeks to rescue the abandoned spaces of the city with art.The project builds on the international artistic movements of major cities. It has created a multicultural urban art initiative in Puerto Rico through the participation of local and international artists."

"DALeast is easily one of the most prolific street artists of our time. He is also an accomplished painter, sculptor, and digital artist. He was born in 1984 in Wuhan, China and is currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. He studied Sculpture at the Institute of Fine Arts and began making public art in 2004. His murals can be found in cities around the world including the U.S., Switzerland, Namibia, France, Israel, Australia and China. He mainly uses animals as his works’ subject matter. He regularly includes faint line work in the background of his paintings. This line work creates a shadowing effect for his images in the foreground. The resulting effect is magic-like, and DALeast delivers a sense of wonder with his work every time. DALeast’s art is meant to capture its audience’s emotion in every possible way."

"Sego, a moniker derived from his last name Segovia, is originally from Mexico. He is inspired by wildlife, the environment, the natural processes of living things, and the relationship between man and nature, among other things. We can see these influences in his murals, embodied by impressive and elaborate insects. These murals can be found in cities such as Havana, Paris, Buenos Aires, Elche (Spain) and Miami (Florida, USA)."

"Francisco Fasoli alias Jaz, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, doesn't seek to establish a social or political opinion with his art. His goals are to break up the monotony and express himself freely. He began painting in 1999 as part of a new generation of Argentine artists interested in representing traditional themes of their culture. Through the years, his major themes and inspiration has changed. Nowadays he focuses on themes such as cities, identity clashes, and interesting characters composed of human bodies. We can find his work in Barcelona, ​​New York, Atlanta, Paris and Brazil."

"Aryz, born in the interesting city of Barcelona, Spain, brings us an attractive work that integrates different topics with a colorful style giving it a twist. Its dynamic and gigantic pieces are full of detail and personality. Aryz creates fantastic atmospheres resembling those of science fiction. His work is full of emotions and style.  He finds inspiration in everything that surrounds him, whether it is good or bad. His work can be found on abandoned walls on the outskirts of Barcelonas as well as in New York, Germany, Poland, Italy, India, and Bosnia and now in the Caribbean."

"Corográfico (alias El Coro) is a collective group of seven Puerto Rican artists: Acty2, Esco, Rimx, Smoke, Son, Nepo and Spear, united by their passion for denouncing social injustice and revealing a unique vision of society through urban art.

They work around the island creating murals and sharing their message. Beyond their work as a group, each of the seven artists specializes in different forms of visual art. Their individual styles range beyond typical “street art”. The set of skills that every artist has represents their unique perspective as well as their work."

"Conor Harrington, born in Cork, Ireland, has earned worldwide recognition for his dramatic works embodied in the street. His blend of the historic and the hypermodern is unsurpassed, he combines vintage elements with contemporary elements, creating complex compositions employing the pathos of the past to stress the importance of current events. Conor’s first works use cutting-edge graffiti techniques to create intense, multi-layered artworks that allude to the work of Abstract Expressionist artists."

"Celso González, born in Puerto Rico, is a multidisciplinary artist from an early age who felt a call to be an artist. Ever since, he hasn't stopped creating different art techniques and methods. From architecture to mosaic, he has experimented with all kinds of materials to carry a message that is often introspective. More than a muralist, he's a Puerto Rican artist who has filled Puerto Rico with artworks for over 15 years. He sometimes uses symbolism derived from his origins with references such as the “bomba”, “plena”, masks and “vejigantes”, although recently we've seen in his work transition from abstract to a figurative style. He has taken his particular jargon to a variety of countries including Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Mexico, and Taiwan among others."

"Nicolás Romero known as Ever, was born in Argentina and began painting in the streets of Buenos Aires since the 90s. Today, he brings an intelligent perspective that is paired with social consciousness in streets all over the world. His work features an interesting combination of social awareness represented with cultural icons that sometimes stand in juxtaposition and are sometimes intertwined. He is characterized by the contrast he creates by combining great realistic portraits with colorful abstract shapes. He firmly expresses his position on topics from politics, religion, and our daily lives. In recent years he has painted in Atlanta, Baltimore, Mexico, Peru and Paris."

"Inti Castro, a muralist from Valparaiso, Chile, has been creating murals since he was 14 years old.  He was influenced by the original Latin American and classical iconography of graffiti, and developed his work with a strong personality, setting him apart from what had existed in the streets of Chile. By 2002, he changed his perception of graffiti when traveling to the cities of Brazil. This new vision gave him more freedom of expression and took him to more experimental paths of native cultures and mixed them with a particular poetic subjectivity. You can see the evolution of his style and his passion via the colors of his exotic characters on huge city walls. His works have impacted countries worldwide like Spain, Chile, Norway, France and Germany."

"Roa, born in Belgium, is recognized worldwide as one of the most important muralists of this time. His work is characterized by huge and impressive figures of animals in black and white, strategically placed so that they interact with the space that surrounds them. Roa’s animals transmit a certain emotion through their tired gaze as if they were observing the city and reacting to their context. He has enhanced city walls around the world with a freehand style as he does not sketches and only designs his painting once he reaches the city and its local context. While he prefers to express himself freely and not to please an institution for the sake of a commission, most of the walls have been painted with permits and he has exhibited interesting pieces and installations at museums and galleries."

"Axel Void, born in Miami, was raised in Spain, where from an early age he became interested in classical painting and drawing. He creates his murals with spray paint, olio and acrylic. He is famous for his huge outdoor murals as well as for his small technically perfect designs. Void’s work features themes such as drugs, poverty and death. "

"Faith, born in South Africa, is an artist who, through her work, pays tribute to nature and spirituality within an urban environment. Her street illustrations give the impression that real life is part of a story."

"Born in Puerto Rico, Alexis Diaz's inspiration comes from all areas. Everything around him is a source: nature, music, the daily sunrise, and life itself. At each site that he goes to, he creates his own creatures, species that can adapt to the environment, and that can evolve. The use of Asian ink in his walls makes his work distinct. His murals have can be found in countries like Austria, UK, USA, Peru, Mexico, Tunisia, Slovakia, Italy, Germany, Denmark and many others."

"Born in Puerto Rico, David Zayas began formal studies at the School of Fine Arts in Ponce. His first reference to the drawing was the work of his father, an illustrator. Through his father’s influence, Zayas began to draw. His first experiments were to copy images, but his curiosity evolved until he found his own style.

To Zayas, society and the university are essential in the development of his works. He always tries to ensure that the viewer remains in a confused state, a midpoint where the person can decide which way to go. He plays with the good and the bad. In his work, everything is in constant play and constantly coexistent."

"Born on June 22, 1985 in San Juan, Vero Rivera graduated from the School of Visual Arts in San Juan, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts with a major in painting. Initially, Veronica made leaf pieces. She altered and cut the interior design of the leaf, dried the leaves, and then made the patterns.

Now she works with other materials but retains the organic forms as the basis of her work. Many can be compared with a decorative and even spiritual oriental style. She emphasizes the importance of making use of the materials that the environment provides.

Vero Rivera has been part of several group exhibitions at the National Museum of Puerto Rico, El Cuartel Ballajá, Fine Arts in Santo Domingo, among others. Additionally, Vero attended as a guest artist in projects such as: La Ruta del Festival Viajero, Sin Fin Arte: Colores Vivos, Trastalleres; Barrio Boquerón, received the third award “Florece la Primavera Glade”."

"Similar to the growth of PUN 18's art, graffiti has led to a smooth transition in the creation of murals and paintings, playing an important role in his career since he was 15 years old. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, public murals, commissions. His works can be found in Puerto Rico, Spain, Canada, USA, France and Germany. He has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers in Puerto Rico and abroad, in books such as “The History of American Graffiti”, “Graffiti Planet” 1 and 2, among many others. Pun18 born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1985, lives and works in Bayamon, Puerto Rico."

"Born in Foggia in 1986, Agostino Lacurci lives and works in Rome. In his works of synthetic forms and bright colors, he drives multiple layers of interpretation through an essential language. This approach places his narratives on the perennial threshold between innocence and artifice, serenity and catastrophe, in a magnetic tension that is the interpretive key to our very existence. In 2009 he created a 300-meter work for Saba School in Western Saharawi. In 2011, he took part in the “Rebibbia On The Wall” project, painting, together with the inmates, three huge participative murals, within the courtyard of the maximum-security area. In 2012, he created an installation work on three buildings of the Besançon University Campus, France. In 2013, for the “Fubon Art Foundation” in Taipei, he made an installation on a 21 story skyscraper and he has been selected to represent Italy at “La Tour 13” in Paris. His work has been shown in many exhibitions, festivals and projects in Europe, USA, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Korea, Japan and Taiwan."

"Daniel Muñoz “SAN” began his artistic career in the early nineties painting on walls and other public locations in Moral (Cáceres), where he was born and raised. In 2000 he moved to Madrid to begin his university studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Complutense University, where he did his first exhibitions and mural interventions in many cities in Spain and Europe. His language consists of symbols and codes that imply a careful reading between the narrative of classical painting and moral discourses of contemporary art. All of his works force us to fall into diverse and complex interpretations, despite daily narrating facts and anecdotes, based on the most mundane topics. In recent years he has made hundreds of interventions in public spaces and exhibitions worldwide. His work has been published in numerous books and publications artistic prestige, emphasizing its monograph edited by Bel in 2006."

"Born in Los Angeles in 1980, El Mac has been creating and studying art independently since he was a child. He was inspired at a young age by classic European painters such as Caravaggio, Vermeer and Art Nouveau symbolists such as Klimt and Mucha. This was mixed with the more contemporary influences of graffiti and photorealism, as well as the Chicano & Mexican culture he grew up in. He began painting with acrylics and graffiti in the mid ’90s, when his primary focus became the life-like rendering of human faces and figures. He has since worked consistently toward developing his unique rendering style, which utilizes repeating contour lines reminiscent of ripples, turing patterns, and indigenous North American art. In 1999, he began to paint portraits of his friends and anonymous Mexican Laborers in public spaces throughout the American southwest, both legally and illegally. He also started painting large technicolor aerosol interpretations of classic paintings by old European masters. This led to being commissioned in 2003 by the Groeninge Museum in Brugge, Belgium to paint his interpretations of classic Flemish paintings in the museum’s collection. He has since then been commissioned to paint murals across the US, as well as in Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, South Korea, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Singapore, Germany, Ireland, the UK, Vietnam and Cuba. Mac’s art was featured on the cover of Juxtapoz Magazine in 2009 and again in 2012, as well as the cover of LA Weekly for a feature on the Seventh Letter collective.  In the last few years he has had successful solo exhibitions at Fifty24SF Gallery in San Francisco (2009), and Joshua Liner Gallery in NYC (2010).  In 2010, he also painted a large mural on the museum of contemporary art (MARCO) in Monterrey, Mexico as part of the Seres Queridos project.  In 2012 he painted a large mural in Havana, Cuba for the 11th Havana Biennial sponsored by the Cisneros-Fontanals Art Foundation."

"Born and raised in San Juan Puerto Rico, Juan Gutiérrez is known as “The Stencil Network.” His art specializes with template techniques that has been practiced for about 10 years. The bulk of his artistic knowledge is due to self-learning as the artist by practice rather than academia.

Today, his work belongs to several public and private collections, including the ICP and MAPR, and has been shown in Puerto Rico, New York and Vienna. “The Stencil Network” has managed recognition at the scene of local and global art for his work can be described as a graphic, figurative and high contrast that has as precedent the 'pop art' and propaganda.

He is a central figure in a new generation of young people that address socio-political issues and brings them to different environments, including galleries. His work combines classic and contemporary references to create dramatic dialogue with the viewer."