Street Art in Florence - When graffiti meets Street Art

Street Art also includes graffiti or writing, that is, the signatures that street artists invent with the utmost chromatic and graphic creativity and try to place in as many places as possible. On the walls, on the train sides, on the bridges pillars, etc. A desire or need to be present, recognized. Writers are always on the run, they need to work fast therefore the culture of writing is limited to tags and lettering, while Street Art is characterized by a more elaborate artistic productions, that includes a variety of mediums other than spray paints and a variety of subject be it figurative or abstract.

Though Graffiti and Street Art are different, often times the boundaries are not so clear and the two artistic expressions overlap. It is the case of those works that include both lettering and figurative images.

Two examples of this come form the Cure underpass, the Street Art gallery of Florence.
One is a huge monster emerging from the center of a graffiti, shattering the concrete letters. The monster is very well defined and its volumes studied in details. It certainly took some time to make this piece, and some preliminary studies.

The other example is that of a writing including the image of a beautiful green and red bird. It looks like a big water bird, similar to a cormoran, but the colors are different, perhaps it is an imaginary bird, but we are no ornithologists so we could be wrong.

The image is less detailed than the other one, but it still very realistic and beautifully designed. It couldn’t have been done in a hurry.

So is it graffiti art? Is it Street art? We are not certain, perhaps they were made by street artists who wanted to do some lettering, perhaps by writers who wanted to take their time with their work for once. We cannot tell, but we can appreciate both artwork regardless of their nature.