The streets of São Paulo are covered with street art murals. These murals usually tell the history of many artists and muralists who always boosted these walls with new styles and techniques portraited in unique pieces.
With no doubt, the most famous murals of the city were created by the worldwide known Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra – who has started as a graffiti artist, became a graffiti artist and today he defines himself as a muralist.
His talent springs up around 1987, in the Campo Limpo neighbourhood with “pixo” and graffiti, dear to the Hip Hop movement, and spreads throughout the city and around the world.
Today, Kobra murals are spread in about 35 countries and in several Brazilian cities and states. From Ayrton Senna to David Bowie– you have probably seen some of the most famous and iconic people portraited in huge colourful pieces displayed around the world.
On his new mural, Coexistence, Kobra depicts children from five religions – Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. The work brings a message of faith and hopes while remembering the victims of Covid-19 and highlights the importance of Science, symbolized using masks.
For Kobra, there no contradiction between having faith in God and believing in Science. The 28-meter-wide and the 7-meter-high mural, located in the west of São Paulo, accentuates the altruism of men and women who come together, all over the world, to minimize the pain, death and suffering caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
His art is unique, and his talent has been also used to help future artists.
Instituto Kobra: art as an instrument of social transformation
Founded in February 2021, the Instituto Kobra is an organisation that believes in art as an instrument of the social transformation of adolescents and young people in a vulnerable state in Brazil.
His institute should promote actions, primarily in underprivileged communities, taking artistic manifestations – not only of fine arts and graffiti, but also of music, theatre, and literature – to those who usually have little, and sometimes non, access to museums and cultural centres.
In addition to this, it will also make it possible for other muralists and graffiti artists, both Brazilian and from abroad, to present their art, knowledge, and life stories to young people from underprivileged areas through cultural exchanges.
In the same way that art has changed his life, he believes that culture, in general, can be a tool of social transformation for many young Brazilians.
Looks so cool