A Short Story about Malasaña Street Art

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This Blog features a range of Madrid street art: a combination of what I found in the streets of Malasaña - the inner suburb where we stayed - and what I added in my wanderings over the four days we stayed.

As Phoenix the Street Artist I have made street works in Melbourne, Sydney, and Byron Bay; in Spain in Barcelona, Cadaques, Granada, Seville - and these pieces in Madrid. Other pieces of mine have been installed by other people in Paris, Berlin, Sao Paulo, and Toronto.

I this is your sort of thing:!Enjoy! If you don't know: have a look..

The photos are below: click on each one for a larger view - and to see the full text of each caption.

My Flickr site shows a fairly comprehensive range of my works - with a number of collections of photos which explain my process. I am also on Facebook and Instagram.

You can access these social media most easily by Googling: 'Phoenix the Street Artist'.

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Photos

Phoenix !AQUI!
Conceived in Jubilés, copy-collaged in Seville, and constructed in Madrid, this declaration of being !HERE! in Spain finally made its way (in sticker form) onto a door in Calle de la Palma - the street in which we stayed - in amongst a whole range of other graffiti pieces.

Cutback in White 1
This cutting back in white presumably using stencils to mask and therefore use the graffiti background underneath was new to me. I saw four great examples of this around Malasaña: a bit of a blast, because I had read about it in the days before arriving in Madrid, and even seen a photo of this piece - and, suddenly, there it was in the flash - about 100 metres from where we were staying.

Madrid Roller Door Art
Roller doors are a common and often fully-sanctioned form of street art in Spain. This was one of the great examples I saw - in one of the streets of Malasaña.

A Sign of Marilyn
A lot of signs get modified - like this one by Nikii - one of several stencil works I saw by this artist.

Madrileño Dali - Amarillo en Verde
My Dali Elephant Tees - Yellow on Green.

Madrileño Dali - Verde en Rojo
My Dali Elephant Tees - Green on Yellow.

Madrileño Dali - Rojo en Amarillo
My Dali Elephant Tees - Red on Yellow.

Invader Smilie
A tiled pixelation after the style of Invader.

Cutting the Sausage
A rapid 'throw-up' (fast spray paint piece) showing - like in the art of calligraphy - a confident and practised hand.

Elephant Pole
One of mine, in Calle de la Palma. This involved the applying of six separate Dalí Elephant Hearts - all with a combination of cornflour paste and PVA.

Trying to Remove the Elephants
On our last morning in Madrid, I went out to take photos of pieces I had put up the night before. Just down the street I found this Council worker trying to remove my Elephant Pole pasteup from the pole - thinking it was a sticker. Before long he gave up trying to peel it off. He got out his shovel; for a moment I thought he was going to use it to scrape it off - but he just went about shovelling up some stuff from the ground.

Giving Up on the Elephants
The Elephants left intact - for now.

Cutback in White 2
This is another example of the stencilling technique putting white paint over the top of a graffitied background. Nicely done.

FaceBox
A stencilled meter box.

Heart + Tags
I saw these Hearts in Granada on our travels: this artist sure gets around. You could say Heart icons are something after my own Heart.

Whale in a Box
One of my Whale Tail stickers on a box in Calle de Pez.

A Dalí Perspective
A couple of stickers can work nicely on a pole - they did survive one night and morning - but I doubt they will last too long. Hopefully someone will peel them off and give them a good home. From my Dalíesque Series.

De la Palma street art
This was a beautiful piece of spraypaint art on a wall just down the street from our apartment - and across the road from Toma Café - by far the best coffee in the area.

Matching Hearts
I was struck by the uncanny similarities between this Bar sign with the DEJA TU (Corazon) SER LIBRE [LET YOUR (Heart) BE FREE] from my Silent (Heart) Series. So I had to add a sticker here.

Heart Match
A closer view of my DEJA TU (Corazon) SER LIBRE sticker.

Castle Pasteup
This was a beautiful large pasteup on the corner of a couple of the main streets in Malasaña - a lovely drawing of a castle, enlarged to A0 width paper using the process used to create architectural prints.

Comments

[vetti]

i heart heart match
Hey Dave, sweet pics as always...heart match is brilliant :-)