Street painting

A street painter working in New York City.

A street painter or pavement artist in Stuttgart, Germany with an unfinished picture.

A street painter working outside Centre Pompidou. The painting being copied is Vermeer's Het meisje met de parel.

Street painting, also commonly known as pavement art, street art, and sidewalk art, is the performance art of rendering original and non-original artistic designs on pavement such as streets, sidewalks, and town squares with impermanent and semi-permanent materials such as chalk.

Origin

The origins of modern street painting began in Britain. Pavement artists were found all over the UK and by 1890 it was estimated that over 500 artists were making a full time living from pavement art in London alone.

The British term for Pavement artist is "screever". The term is derived from the writing, often Copperplate, that typically accompanied the works of pavement artists since the 1700s. The term screever is most commonly cited as Shakespearean slang dating from around 1500.

The works of screevers were often accompanied by poems and proverbs, lessons on morality and political commentary on the day’s events. They were described as "producing a topical, pictorial newspaper of current event."^{[citation needed]} They appealed to both the working man and woman, who (on the whole) could not read or write, but understood the visual images; and the educated middle-classes who appreciated the moral lessons and comments. It was important for a screever to catch the eye of the ‘well to do’ and in turn attract the pennies.

Street painters, (also called chalk artists) a name these performance artists are most commonly called in the USA are called I Madonnari in Italy (singular form: madonnaro or madonnara) because they recreated images of the Madonna. In Germany Strassenmaler (street: straßen, painter: maler).

The Italian I Madonnari were itinerant artists, many of whom had been brought into the cities to work on the huge cathedrals. When the work was done, they needed to find another way to make a living, and thus would often recreate the paintings from the church onto the pavement. Aware of festival and holy days in each province and town, they traveled to join in the festivities to make a living from observers who would throw coins if they approved of the artist's work. For centuries I Madonnari were folk artists, reproducing simple images with crude materials such as tiles, coal and chalk.

In 1973, street painting was being promoted in ITALY by the formation of a festival in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy.

In the 1980s, Kurt Wenner practiced '3D pavement art,' or one-point perspective art, otherwise known as anamorphic art, a 500 year old technique, which appeared as proper perspective only when viewed from a specific angle.^{[citation needed]}

Festivals

2010 Sarasota Chalk Festival

The first recorded street-painting competition & 'festival' was held in London in 1906.

In 1972 the first 'Italian' International Street Painting Competition was held in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy.

In 1987, Wenner and Manfred Stader introduced street painting to Old Mission Santa Barbara, California.

One of the largest events in the United States is the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival, held in Lake Worth Florida. Started in 1994, it attracts 100,000 visitors over the weekend to see 250 works of art by over 400 artists.

Started in 2002, The Denver Chalk Art Festival on Larimer Square, located in Downtown Denver, is a free two-day street-painting festival. More than 200 artists spend hours during the weekend turning the streets of Larimer Square, into a museum of chalk art. The Festival is produced by the Larimer Arts Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting arts awareness and education in Denver.

In 2010, the First International Street Painting Festival in the United States was organized by Denise Kowal, President of the Avenida de Colores, Inc. 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that produced the Sarasota Chalk Festival. Over 250 street painters attended the Halloween-themed festival that featured street painters from around the world.

In 2011 the First International StreetArt was staged in Wilhelmshaven in Germany. The event is scheduled to return in August 2012.

At Sarasota's chalkfestival 2011 Dutch artist Leon Keer and the team of Planet Streetpainting created the 3d street painting of the Lego Terracotta Army. The chalk painting was inspired by Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army "in honor of the arrival of Ego Leonard and to support his release out of his custody.

3d Lego Terracotta Army by Leon Keer

See also

street artist in Florence, Italy

• Anamorphic art
• Street art
• Street artist
• List of street artists
• Expressions in Chalk Street Painting Festival
• Sidewalk chalk
• Art destruction
• Kolam

Notable artists

• Tracy Lee Stum
• Edgar Mueller
• Melanie Stimmell
• Julian Beever
• Kurt Wenner
• Leon Keer

External links

Media related to Street art at Wikimedia Commons

• Street art/Pavement Art/Madonnari at the Open Directory Project