Street Art

The city of Lisbon, as we know it today, is one of the most colourful in Europe. 

But it was not always so. In fact, until the 17th century, the city had a tradition of completely white buildings. After a major earthquake in the mid-18th century, the city began to rebuild and the locals started adding colour and decorative tiles to the exterior walls of houses and pavements, starting a new tradition. 

Colour and art in the streets of Lisbon intensified from the 1970s, after the democratic revolution.

With the student and workers’ protest movements involving many countries around the world, the first graffiti, tags, stencils, installations appear in Lisbon. 

Symbols of protest and socio-cultural criticism were considered acts of vandalism to be combated. 

After decades of futile struggles against street art, in 2008 the city council of Lisbon decided to create the GAU – Galleria de Arte Urbana, an official unit of the Departamento do Património Cultural that is responsible for identifying and granting walls and other spaces in the city free of charge to artists who request them. 

By giving up the fight against this form of artistic and political expression and attempting to regulate it, illegal graffiti has decreased and the city has become one of the most artistic and colourful in Europe.Street art has become one of the city’s distinguishing features.

Over time, more and more initiatives have sprung up to transform abandoned spaces into urban art galleries. In addition, festivals and tours are organised to promote this increasingly fundamental artistic sphere for Lisbon and tourism.  

The goals:

The objectives of street art in Lisbon start from a political dimension that underlies this artistic expression worldwide in history. It therefore represents a tool for socio-cultural criticism, protest and the claiming of spaces. 

To this common intent are added others such as urban regeneration, aimed at transforming abandoned or degraded neighbourhoods into open-air art galleries accessible to all. 

Street art in Lisbon has become an integral part of the tourist sphere thanks to tours and initiatives of various kinds that transform this art form into an engine of economic development. 

Street art is also a phenomenon that unites artists, citizens and institutions, opening a dialogue between them. 

Financing^:

Street art in Lisbon is supported by public and private funding where the municipality plays a key role. 

One of the main promoters is the Galeria de Arte Urbana (GAU), which works to integrate urban art in public spaces and provide support for artists through calls for proposals and projects financed by the city.

An important initiative is the MURO Festival, launched in 2016 in the Bairro Padre Cruz neighbourhood. The festival has expanded funding opportunities for national and international artists, offering spaces for murals and art installations, as well as events such as workshops and lectures on street art.

In addition to municipal investments, there are programmes such as the Underdogs Project, which receives funds to promote emerging and established artists through exhibitions and events, and the LxFactory, a creative area that hosts numerous street art works and receives support from the city’s cultural and tourism sector.

Tours

As street art has intensified on the streets of Lisbon, more and more tours have been organised around this theme. Many guides help tourists discover hidden art treasures in the various districts of the city as well as delve into the city’s urban art history. 

There are different types of tours.

Walking tours with specialised guides

Tours linked to organised events such as Lisbon Street Art

Private, customised tours with the possibility of workshops and other activities

If you are interested in booking a tour, you can find more information on platforms such as GetYourGuide or on the official Lisbon Street Art Tours website.

Artists: 

Among the most prominent names in the city’s urban art scene are:

Vhils (Alexandre Farto): a nationally and internationally renowned street artist known for his works sculpted directly on the walls of buildings, creating deep and intense portraits. This is a unique technique called bas-relief. His works can be admired in various places in the city, such as in Travessa das Mercês.

In addition, Vhils is co-founder of Underdogs, a cultural project in Lisbon that promotes urban art through exhibitions, art editions and collaborations with other international artists.

Bordalo II: Known for his animal sculptures made from recycled materials, the rubbish, the ultimate result of a consumerist society that is slowly making the planet we live on sick. He combines street art and recycling art in his works.    His great act of artistic protest is called Big Trash Animals. This famous street artist uses his art to criticise and deconstruct the materialistic and capitalist society in which we live, with the aim of awakening consciences.

You can find his works walking around the city, for example the two pelicans near the Elevador de Santa Justa or the fox with magnetic eyes on Avenida 24 de Julho.

Shepard Fairey: The famous American artist has created several works in Lisbon. His style combines various elements of pop art, political propaganda and street art, using intense colours and highly symbolic images. With his works he wants to make a contribution to socio-cultural denunciation and political resistance. One of the most famous and iconic works in Lisbon is “Peace and Guard”, a symbol of the transition from fascism to democracy that Portugal experienced in 1974, located on Rua Natalia Correia. He collaborated with Vhils in creating a portrait of a woman on Rua Senhora da Gloria. 

Add Fuel (Diogo Machado): A Portuguese artist who wants to unite past and present by combining urban art with the Portuguese tradition of azulejos tiles. He creates works that are complex and rich in detail, creating optical effects and combining different techniques. One of his works can be found on Avenida Infante Santo. 

Mariana santos: a young artist from Lisbon who creates her works using a figurative style where she combines painting, engraving, film and literary influences.

She focuses on themes such as memory, collective identity and local histories, often using archive photographs. One of her works can be seen in Rua Nova do Deserto.

Tamara Alves: A Portuguese visual artist and illustrator who, through her works, offers a narrative of reality that celebrates primordial vitality, raw passion, the animal side of humans, the opposition between instinct and rationality. He depicts human and (female) animal figures interacting with the environment and highly symbolic objects. One of his works can be found at the Panoramico de Monsanto. She participated in the project “A Lata Delas” together with Patricia Mariano, Margarida Fleming, Maria Imaginario. These artists have created works that everyone can see and admire at the pedestrian access to the Entrecampos station on Avenida Álvaro Pais. The intention of the project is to give space to female voices in an environment dominated, like many others unfortunately, historically by men. 

Some street art in social neighbourhoods

Street art, as mentioned above, plays a fundamental role in the social fabric of Lisbon and is a tool for redemption, especially in the city’s social neighbourhoods.

Bairro Padre Cruz

Located in the north is the largest urban social housing project in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the largest in Europe. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lisbon’s growth was planned with new development plans that included the elimination of shacks in the city and the radical transformation of eastern Lisbon, as the city would host the 1998 Universal Exhibition.

In this context, the Bairro Padre Cruz was one of the sites chosen to build social housing. Thus, the “new quarter” emerged with buildings housing families of completely different origins, who were also different from the residents of the “old quarter”.

Frictions arose between the various residents of the neighbourhood, which they tried to stem with various initiatives including urban art events. The two most significant festivals were MURO Lx 2016 promoted by GAU; the participating artists created more than sixty works visible on the side walls of many buildings. The second, “Criar Mudança através de Arte Urbana” (Creating Change through Urban Art) a project promoted by the cultural association Boutique da Cultura in collaboration with Crescer a Cores.

Olaias, Quinta do Lavrado and Picheleira

These neighbourhoods affected in different ways by social problems have found in community projects and street art initiatives a way to tell their stories and fight against social discrimination. 

The inhabitants themselves, supported by various associations, organise guided tours to tell the story of their communities through murals. The initiative As Costas da Cidade uses street art to reflect on urban transformations and to give voice to the stories of residents

Bairro Branco and Bairro do Vale
These neighbourhoods also promote urban art as a tool for social regeneration and strengthening community identity. Various projects have involved the local population in the creation of murals, transforming the urban landscape and strengthening the identity of the area.

With the involvement of local associations, guided tours are organised to show the history of the neighbourhoods through graffiti.

In all these neighbourhoods, one can see how street art can be a tool for social transformation, able to give visibility to marginalised communities, creating a sense of belonging.