Street Painting, Another Way To Express Idea

2010 Sarasota Chalk Festival photo by Rod Millington

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

Origin
Street painting has been recorded throughout Europe since the 16th century. Street Painters, a name these performance artists are most commonly called in the USA are historically called I Madonnari in Italy (singular form: madonnaro) because they recreated images of the Madonna. In England they are called Screevers and in Germany Strassenmaler.

The Italian I Madonnari were itinerant artists. 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 artists work. For centuries I Madonnari were folk artists, reproducing simple images with crude materials such as tiles, coal and chalk until World War II disrupted their tradition and reduced their numbers.


In 1972, a street painting was being promoted again by the formation of a festival in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy and today the performance art-form is recognized all over the world.

In 1982, Kurt Wenner, who is recognized as the innovator of 3-D street painting and others followed developing new styles based on the work of artists such as Andrea Mantegna, M. C. Escher, Michelangelo, Hans Holbein and others. Today this work is called 3d Street Painting, 3D Pavement Art, 3D Chalk Art, 3D Sidewalk Art, 3D Illusion, anamorphic or 3D, although in the past it was called one-point perspective.

In 2010, Edgar Mueller, created a 100' x 40' 3-D street painting that for the first time in history was designed to metamorphose, the image changing from day to night from a giant into a fetus, through the use of photoluminescent paints.

Painters
The first known street painter in the US was Sidewalk Sam, who began painting in the streets of Boston in 1973.

In 1982 Kurt Wenner, an American, began street painting in Rome. By 1983 he took the already-existing anamorphic art form to the street by drawing, then brushing, his home-made pastels into a painting. In 1984 he was documented by National Geographic in their film Masterpieces In Chalk. That same year he won the title of "Maestro Madonnaro" at the Grazie festival.

Later in the early 1990s Michael Kirby began to work in Europe as a streetpainter creating more original work based on contemporary issues and not on classical ideas and designs. He would go on to become a master streetpainter in all the major festivals across Europe including Germany, Italy, and Holland. He would later bring the art form to other countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ireland, Canada, and various parts of the United States. His work was featured at the Smithsonian Institution in DC, National Geographic, David Letterman Show, North Carolina Museum of Art, Rai Television, and others. Today his studio, Murals of Baltimore, is hired to create public art around the world and is considered the leader in street painting.

In 2008 Street Painter Mark Wagner set a Guinness World Record for the largest chalk drawing. The piece covered 90,000 sq. ft. (8,361 sq. meters) and was created by 6,000 people (over 4,000 elementary school children). A satellite photograph was taken from 423 miles high.

Festivals
In 1972 the first International Street Painting Competition was held in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy. The goal of the competition was to record and publicize the work of (those thought to be) the last practitioners of this traditional art form.

In 1987, Wenner and Manfred Stader introduced street painting to Old Mission Santa Barbara, California. This was the first of numerous events in the United States to be modeled on the Italian festival.

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) nonprofit corporation that produced the Sarasota Chalk Festival. Over 250 street painters attended the Halloween-themed festival attracting some of the best street painters from around the world such as Maestro Madonnaro and Guinness World Record holder Edgar Mueller from Germany who created the first day/night 3D street painting using photoluminescence paints 100' x 40'; Guinness World Record holder Leon Keer from the Netherlands; Maestra Madonnaro Vera Bugatti from Italy; Genna Panzarella who was the first woman to receive the title Maestra Madonnaro in Grazie di Curtatone and Guinness World Record holder Tracy Lee Stum from California created a 65' x 30' 3D Mousetrap interactive game that had two separate perspective planes, called two-point perspective.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_painting