Ten Of The Best Street Artists In The World

D*Face

D*Face has created his own world, with his own characters. Born and raised in London, the bizarre and twisted mind of D*Face has gained him a massive following, especially in North America and England. Sold out shows to see his classic skeletal images are just the tip of the ice berg.

Dolk

Norwegian stencil artist Dolk started creating street art back in 2003 and was originally seen as a possible pseudonym of Banksy due to their similar styles. Yet Dolk's darker and more humorous style has since drawn a huge following from around the world.

Faile

The instantly recognizable pop culture images of the New York based street art collective known as Faile have been popular since 2002 with a large number of world wide exhibitions and shows. Faile have collaborated with other great street artists such as Swoon and David Ellis

Jef Aerosol

Along with fellow Frenchman Blek Le Rat, Jef Aerosol was among the first street artists to use stencils to create his artwork. He's been stencilling for almost 30 years and you can find his work predominantly in France.

Swoon
Hailing from the streets of New York, Swoon has been big in the street art scene for going on a decade now. Her unique style of wheat pasting life sized images of her family and friends have gained her a huge following around the globe and her work keeps getting better.

Vhils

Stunning crowds at the 2008 Cans Festival with this stunning piece of stencil art. Argentinian artists Alexandre Farto (aka Vhils) chiseled away at a white wall to create this stunning and almost 3D image.

BanksyPossibly the most well known street artist in the world, Banksy has been in the public eye for close to a decade now and his popularity shows just how big street art is in the 21st century. His recent summer show opened in Bristol with 4 hour queue to get through the door.

Blek Le Rat
Blek Le Rat is one of, if not the first major stencil artists of all time. Starting way back in the early 80's. Regarded as many as the "Godfather" of stencil art. Even Banksy showed his respect to the Frenchman with one of the most famous quotes in Street art. "Every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well, only twenty years earlier"

BluBlu took street art to a new level a few years ago. Instead of keeping it as a flat single image, he combined street art with animation to create a video named Muto. This incredible video spread round the Internet like wild fire and firmly placed Blu as one of the 21st Century's most innovative street artists.

CES53

CES53 has been in the street art game for almost 25 years now and his work keeps getting better and better. Becoming famous for being one of the first to paint on the side of Northern European trains, he's since branched out into paintings and sculptures. In 2005 he joined Dutch street art collective Lastplak.

Tate Modern hits the "Streets"

This Morning the Tate Modern opened its doors on its first Street Art exhibition even though pictures have been floating around for a few days.

6 of the worlds most influential street artists have erected these monster pieces. In the picture right you can see the work by Sixeart (Spain), JR (France) and Faile (USA).

The free exhibition also features work from Nunca and Os Gemeos (Brazil) who previously worked together on the Graffiti Project at Kelburn Castle in Scotland


Italian Blu is also on display (see left) after a great few months for him. Some of you may have seen Blu's recent animation 'Muto' appearing on the internet over the last few weeks. I expect to be seeing more and more of Blu's amazing style of art and can't wait to get some on a canvas soon.

If your planning a trip this Bank Holiday weekend and fancy taking in some breathtaking art, pop down to the Tate Modern. If your lucky enough to be about on Monday, head on up to the level 2 Café and watch Graffiti Research Lab have a fun day with some kids of London. Stay till the evening when Graffiti Research Lab will be projecting the kids art work onto the side of the Tate Modern.

Street Art Animation: Blu's Muto

I don't think I need to say much about Blu's stunning piece of animation. Its simply stunning and I highly recommend you watch it all. the short was made in Buenos Aires and took several months to complete.

It is described as an "Ambiguous Animation shot on public walls" This sort of future thinking which fuses street art & animation has never really been done, certainly not to this level of complexity. Blu has always been a bit of a pioneer in the field, famous for his enormous wheat paste-ups of his fictitious trademark characters.




For those of you interested to see more of Blu's work, he's appearing in the Tate Moderns exhibition on street art starting Friday May 23rd.

Street Art - Tate Modern Style

London is to celebrate its first major show of street art at the end of this month. Opening its doors on Friday 23rd of May, the Tate Modern host a free to all exhibition of 6 of the finest street artists in the world.

The exhibition is to feature work from Blu from Bologna, Italy; the artist collective Faile from New York, USA; JR from Paris, France; Nunca and Os Gemeos, both from Sao Paulo, Brazil and Sixeart from Barcelona, Spain.

Also available from the gallery will be a map for the "Street Art Walking Tour". The idea of this is a group of 5 street artists from Madrid will place some location specific art in and around the surrounding area, and its your job, with the help of the map, to find them. I don't know if it will be any good, however, when I head down, I'll pick a copy up and have a browse. Its good to see the Tate Modern thinking on this one, and why not let people see street art on the streets, the name does imply a lot. 3TTMan, Spok, Nano 4814, El Tono and Nuria are the confirmed artists.

On the Monday after the exhibition opens (26th May) the Tate Modern holds a studio day for young people of South London. They get to spend the day working alongside New York artists Graffiti Research Lab. The event is to be held on the level 2 Café, and will also include live bands and music. Graffiti Research Lab have been invited to reface the Tate Modern with a 1 off light projection installation with help from the kids. I'm tempted to go down then just to see what they come up with.

The street art exhibition will carry on till the 25th August and is sponsored by Nissan Qashqai