NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting

Pablo Aravena travelled throughout the world for several years charting the global graffiti movement. The film shows how graffiti developed from an underground activity in The Bronx to a mature art form that has found its way into art galleries worldwide. While it has become an international visual language, at the same time graffiti still retains local accents. Opposing the geometric and neat styles of Holland and Germany are the more extravagant lines and colours of Spain. The minimalist graffiti of Japan can be traced back to the history of Japanese art, which lacked perspective. Aravena meets grand old men like Lee Quiñones, Doze Green and Henry Chalafant, pioneers of graffiti. However, he focuses equally on the contemporary artists who repeatedly reinvent this visual language. Aravena regards graffiti as the abstract expressionism of the 20th and 21st centuries. With his film, he combats the hypothesis that graffiti, originally characterised by anonymity on walls and trains, loses its vitality as soon as it is cherished by the art establishment. Every art form evolves. NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting gives us an insight into this vital evolution. (SdH)