Today, we find ourselves in Bergamo, Italy, a city pulsating with fresh artistic expressions. Amidst the city’s cultural treasures, a captivating mural by the talented artist Fabio Petani has recently emerged, infusing the urban landscape with his distinctive naturalist perspective. Situated at the Istituto I.C. Petteni on Via Papa Ratti 13, this mural is an integral part of the “Questi siamo noi” project, aligning with Bergamo’s status as the 2023 Capital of Culture.
Entitled “Tantemani Pigmenti & The True Quality,” the mural delves into the theme of nature’s prowess, specifically focusing on Spathiphyllum, renowned for its air-purifying abilities. It presents a powerful juxtaposition between the plant’s air-purifying qualities and the encroachment of detrimental elements like benzene in our environment. Petani’s meticulous blend of colors and shapes achieves visual harmony, echoing the mural’s core message—a delicate equilibrium between nature and industrialization.
A native of Pinerolo, Petani holds a Master of Arts in Cultural Heritage from the University of Turin, where he delved into Urban Art and street culture, tracing their roots to the present day. His art embodies a unique fusion of lines, forms, and volumes that converge through a subtle and harmonious palette. Petani’s profound exploration of chemical and molecular intricacies infuses his creations with intricate complexity, accentuating the interplay of art, chemistry, and nature. As you gaze upon this new mural, it serves as a poignant reminder of art’s capacity to inspire and provoke contemplation within the vibrant cultural heart of the city.
Art historian and independent curator of contemporary art, Alessandra Ioalè’s passion lies in championing various contemporary art forms, particularly those often overlooked by mainstream recognition. Her curator, writer, and researcher roles underscore an unwavering dedication to these artistic realms. She encapsulates Petani’s work eloquently: “Regrettably, contemporary urban landscapes often prioritize designs founded on Euclidean geometric structures. This rigidity can inadvertently estrange inhabitants from their surroundings, fostering discomfort. Embracing an understanding of plants can nurture alternative, harmonious ways of coexisting within urban spaces, promoting rebirth and regeneration. Perhaps we can reimagine our cities as urban jungles, where human and natural inhabitants evolve in unison, reshaping our urban identity.”
This harmonious collaboration blossomed from the creative synergy between two Italian artists, each wielding a distinctive technique. Despite their divergent artistic styles, common passions wove them together, affording them to seamlessly create a mural here in Vigone, Italy. Having featured them both within the pages of BSA, we have consistently been captivated by their concepts and their execution.
Fabio Petani & Mr. Fijodor. The Buck Moon – Super Luna del Cervo. Vigone, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artists)
Their new mural, entitled “The Buck Moon – Super Luna del Cervo,” is a tribute to the Deer Supermoon described by Mr. Petani as “the most magnificent, luminous, and visually expansive lunar display due to an optical illusion. The Deer Supermoon graces the skies in early July and earns its name from the fact that this is the time when the antlers of male deer reach their peak size. According to legend, these antlers are believed to cast shadows on the moon’s light. This celestial event, historically linked to fertility and its sway over tides, marked an auspicious period in ancient times for various activities such as hair cutting, bottling, collecting medicinal herbs, sowing, fertilizing, and tending to plants”
Fabio Petani & Mr. Fijodor. The Buck Moon – Super Luna del Cervo. Vigone, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artists)Fabio Petani & Mr. Fijodor. The Buck Moon – Super Luna del Cervo. Vigone, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artists)
This singular tower freshly painted by Fabio Pentani is impressive regardless of its location, but placed here in San Vito Lo Capo in Sicily, context means everything.
Painting for and participating in the SUA Project, the muralist and ecologist often combines natural plant life and compounds or derivatives of plants in his work. Here he has named Mannitol, a compound widely used in medicine, food, and industrial applications, along with Fraxinus excelsior (European Ash), which you will find applications for in timber, traditional medicine, and ecological preservation.
As the corporations and the war machine continue to destroy and de-nature, Italian muralist Fabio Petani makes it his job to re-nature with his rich representation of beauty. It isn’t quite summer here yet in Comacchio, Italy, but Mr. Petani is on the Po river delta for the Manufactory Project 2023 painting his newest mural that brings us face to face with the stunning leaves and stalks and blossoms that draw us in and festoon the streetscape.
Fabio Petani. CHLORIDE ACID & SALICORNIA EUROPAEA. Comacchio, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The artist barely has a word to describe “CHLORIDE ACID & SALICORNIA EUROPAEA” the new mural, before he ascends the wall, cans in hand, a rugged sturdy street artist with the precise eye of a surgeon. He knows that he has begun another spring, another year of travel to add an already prodigious collection of paintings that are aesthetically pleasing and botanically relevant to the environment he paints them in. Here in Comacchio, participating in this festival of music, painting, community, and education, the city plays its role as host, its guests their role of sharing the richness of their talent.
Fabio Petani. CHLORIDE ACID & SALICORNIA EUROPAEA. Comacchio, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Fabio Petani. CHLORIDE ACID & SALICORNIA EUROPAEA. Comacchio, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Fabio Petani. CHLORIDE ACID & SALICORNIA EUROPAEA. Comacchio, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Fabio Petani. CHLORIDE ACID & SALICORNIA EUROPAEA. Comacchio, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Pics: @delta.cinematica Project by @riccardo_buonafede, @stravagante73 @manufactory.project @spaziomarconi
Location: Via Bocca della Punta 3, Comacchio (IT)
To get a true sense of the Manufactury project, see this video from a couple of years ago.
A quick look today at the Street Art for Rights Festival in Rome, Settecamini (IT), where this years theme was centered around the 17 goals of the UN 2030 agenda. It is not the only street art related effort that has chosen these goals as worthwhile to push, with the assumption that organizations like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, neither of them an elected body, have our best interests in mind.
For artist Fabio Petani, himself an Italian and a climate activist with his work, his new mural is naturally in support of Goal 13: Climate Action.
“The graphic composition recalls an hourglass where the passage of time is marked by the inexorable melting of the ice,” he tells us, “which also modifies the climate of desert areas.”
“Fabio Petani is an artist who has always fought for this cause, and in this wall he has decided to talk about it by representing a glacier that is melting and transforming into its opposite: a desert,” organizers say on their Instagram page.
“The disappearance of glaciers and desertification is an ever closer reality if we don’t change something.”
It’s that time of the year again! Our 12th “Hot List” of books – a best-of collection that is highly personal and unscientific and sure to provide you with ideas.
Our interests and network continued to spread far afield this year, and we chose a cross-section of books that are well worth your time – whether it’s the stories they tell or the quality of the stock or the revelation of seeing images previously unseen except by a handful of people. We have political, personal, and professional takes on this beautiful street art scene, as well as a careful instruction book on how to make your own
So here is a short list from 2022 that you may enjoy as well – just in case you would like to give them as gifts to family, friends, or even to yourself.
STRAAT: Quote from the Streets. Lannoo Publishers.
From BSA:
In a space massive enough for a Dutch sea vessel, the Street Art Museum of Amsterdam (STRAAT) has one of the largest collections of today’s mural stars anywhere. During its official maiden voyage, curious street art/graffiti/contemporary art fans look to see if this ship is seaworthy. The brainchild of former graffiti writer, curator, and publisher Peter Ernst Coolen in the early 2010s, the D.N.A. of the museum is rooted in his forward vision as much as the ideal waterfront warehouse that showcases close to 200 international artists.
The human-built city has at times been called a jungle, but the concrete and steel environment flatters itself if it really thinks so. The intelligence and beauty present in the natural plant world far outstrips our modern cityscape, centuries after its origination. At least a few artists have been bringing it back to us in murals over the last few years, introducing a calm, lyrical serenity that dives way beneath the conscious, touching our roots.
The young Italian painter Fabio Petani has been reintroducing a natural agenda to cities across Europe for less than a decade – in a way that only a scientist, botanist, and naturalist with a design sensibility could. What is genuinely original is his subtle re-interpretation of the formal conventions of botany, introducing them to a modern urban audience without lecturing – and rising far beyond purely
Fabio Petani “Spagyria Urbana”. Torino, Italy. 2021. Texts by Alessandra Loale. Layout by Livio Ninni with translation by Mauro Italianodecorative presentations.
An updated version of his initial “Stay Melty” collection a half dozen years ago, street artist Buff Monster expands and shares with you more of his studio production, paintings, sculptures, murals, and ever-growing industry of collectibles in this photo book, a candy-coated volume of eccentricities that capture this moment in an artist’s evolution.
Carlo McCormick’s original text perseveres here as well, most possibly because it still captures so much of the dedicated madness that is Buff, afloat upon the detritus that demarcates our late capitalism era in dirty old New York. McCormick sagely comments on Buff’s take on “a realm of magical thinking in a contemporary visual culture where a few rare artists like Buff Monster can invoke alternate realities as palpably believable and emotionally transformative.”
Poet, urban author, photographer, and longtime NYC messenger Kurt Boone was there too, camera in hand and ready to record the action of the artists getting up on walls and meeting the public. Kurt throws himself into the scene and knows how to navigate while people are enjoying the atmosphere of creativity all around. With his knowledge of the street capturing graffiti, urban cycling, street photography, skateboarding, and busking, you know that his shots are on point.
Instead of uploading everything to a social media platform, Boone asked his friend Anthony Firetto to help lay out his photos to create a book. This is a genuine work of the heart – a self-published hefty book that captures a moment in time, the various players and styles, and a flashpoint in the development of Jersey City as it continues to change.
The political caricature is a treasured form of public discourse that still holds as much power as it did when we relied on the printing press. Able to express sentiment and opinion without uttering a syllable, the artist can sway the direction of conversation with skill, insight, and humor. Artist Robbie Conal has built a career from visually roasting the most sebaceous of our various leaders in the last few decades, often bringing his posters to the street and installing them in advertisers’ wildposting manner.
With the briefest of texts, slogans, or twisted nicknames, he reveals the underbelly as a face, dropping expectations into the sewer. If it were as simple as a political party, one might try to dismiss his work as only partisan. But Conal’s work functions more as an ex-ray, and frequently the resulting scan finds cancer.
ROBBIE CONAL / STREETWISE. 35 YEARS OF POLITICALLY CHARGED GUERRILLA ART. By G. James Daichendt. With a foreword by Shepard Fairey. Published by Schiffer Publishing LTD. Atglen, PA
Page after page of golden NYC hits from the Martha Cooper archive; this new hardcover tome expands the galaxy for fans and academics of that amber-soaked period when it seemed like New York was leading a Spray Nation of graffiti for cities across the country. Known for her ability to capture graffiti writers’ work in its original urban context, Ms. Cooper once again proves that her reputation as the documentarian of an underground/overground aesthetics scene is no joke.
With an academics’ respect for the work, the practice, and the practitioners, Cooper recorded volumes of images methodically for history – and your appreciation. With the vibrant and sometimes vicious city framing their pieces, an uncounted legion of aerosol-wielding street players raced city-wide at top speed, ducking cops and cavorting with a confident abandon in the rusted and screeching steel cityscape. By capturing these scenes without unnecessary editorializing, Cooper gives you access to the organically chaotic graffiti subculture on the move at that moment – directly through her unflinching eyes.
Martha Cooper: Spray Nation. Signed Limited Edtion Box Set is published by Beyond The Streets. With a foreword by Roger Gastman and essays by Steven P. Harrington, Miss Rosen, Jayson Edlin, and Brian Wallis.
One of the exciting book releases this fall drops today in stores across the country – which is appropriate with a name like Spray Nation.
The centerpiece of the complete boxed set released this spring, this thick brick of graffiti tricks will end up on as many shelves as Subway Art; the book of Genesis that prepared everyone for the global scene of graffiti and street art that would unveil itself for decades afterward. See our review from earlier in the year, and sample some of the stunning spreads here, along with quotes by the book’s essay writers, Roger Gastman, Steven P. Harrington, Miss Rosen, Jayson Edlin, and Brian Wallis.
Martha Cooper. SPRAY NATION 1980s Graffiti Photographs. Edited by Roger Gastman. Prestel. Germany, 2022.
Robert Proch: Sketches 2003-2018
From BSA:
“ROBERT PROCH – SKETCHES” : a collection of all the preserved drawings and sketches created by the artist in the years 2003-2018.
We had the opportunity to hang around with artist Robert Proch in 2015 at the No Limit festival in Boras, Sweden. Unassuming and bright, the artist was creating a painting on a massive wall that seemed to us to be insurmountable. He excitedly and with great ease jumped on the cherry picker and dove into the explosion he had sketched – pouring color and gesture into his futurist composition, bending and twisting the axis, capturing the flying energy and elements that appeared to jump off toward the viewer.
Later at dinner in a private home, it was a pleasure to speak with him. A warm, polite, and thoughtful guy – you would not necessarily know that his internal art view was so expansive, except to see his darting eyes perhaps, which didn’t appear to miss anything.
Robert Proch. “Sketches 2003-2018”. Robert Proch Foundation
You hope for it, but nothing is guaranteed. Transitioning from being an artist with a respected, lauded practice of graffiti/street art to a booming professional career on canvas is not a clearly defined route. Although many have tried, are trying right now.
What does it take, you ask? A potent mix of talent, luck, fortitude, applied effort, guts, and a willingness to change one’s approach if necessary, as necessary. In our experience, the last item proves to be the most challenging.
Yo, but Mad C is mad talented.
She’s made it a dedication to studying and learning the craft, fine-tuning the skills, practicing, perfecting, and persevering. All of those qualities will give you a great measure of personal satisfaction even when it doesn’t land you a big bank balance. In the case of MadC, internalizing the practices and codes of graffiti that originated with the 1960s/70s graffiti writers was core – imprinted her creative DNA forever – even though her first attempt to write was not until 1995 in Germany.
Color-blocked basketball courts appreciated from a plane, cheerful abstract murals for restaurants, hotels, and cafes, and massive wood collages comprised of assembled pieces that are each finished before joining. What do these expressions of artist Scott Albrecht have to do with one another? If you study the patterns, in time, you will see.
A handsome cloth-covered hardcopy of works by the Gowanus, Brooklyn-based public/studio artist presents a selection of works from 2017-21 that have a rational color theory, smoothly dynamic geometries, and a soothing certitude in their complexity. Spotlighting public art projects, studio processes, exhibitions in New York and LA, and his residency at Hyland Mather’s place in Portugal, the collection is refined yet human.
The Paris-based stencil artist C215 learned his skills in the street and in the studio beginning in the mid-2000s after being influenced by the burgeoning practice in the street art scene of Barcelona and recognizing the practitioners in his home in Paris. Within a few short years, he was watching the evolution of all his peers – and even curating their work into shows. You can see many styles and techniques by surveying the field, and you’ll decide whose work is a cut above.
“The book that you are holding in your hands is, therefore, a manual, an inventory of techniques to be appropriated in order to get yourself started in the art or to help you develop stenciling’s potential. Stencils have no limits and can be adapted to all styles,” says the author in his introduction.
C215 – The Stencil Graffiti Manual. Schiffer Publishing 2022
A new book here features six years of selected works from a Polish graffiti writer, muralist, and professor of art and painting at a secondary school in his hometown of Olsztyn, Poland. He reckons that his life is one of ‘Planned Freestyle,’ meaning that having structure imposed upon him is very helpful in focusing his creative mind. You may quickly appreciate this characterization if you know any artists.
The collection of selected works here by Bartek Swiatecki is as luminous and optically rewarding to the viewer as they are opaque to the mind and stirring to the heart. With prolific and gently evolving abstractions in movement, you can see an artist at work, at play, and at his personal best – topping his previous work. The grandson of another painter and professor (of philology), Miroslaw Swiatecki, and the nephew of a famous painter and animator, Marek Swiatecki, perhaps it was only a matter of time before this 90s graffiti writer moved into more formal practices on canvas and walls.
As we prepare to celebrate 15 years of daily publishing stories and insights about street artists from around the world here on BSA, you’ll know that there are some whose work has merited hours of writing and photography much more than others – perhaps because we first knew her work here in our neighborhood of Brooklyn long before we began this site. Following her through almost every iteration and project, we’ve interviewed her on many stages and in her studio as she continues to unfold, self-examine, recognize the damage, heal herself, give to others, and create on the street, in the studio, gallery, museum, and now on screen.
For her second bound monogram, Caledonia Curry, AKA Swoon, reviews her path as a collection of psychological and emotional journeys, or perhaps one all-encompassing voyage with concurrents and tributaries running alongside and underneath. Whether she is showing you her early work on the streets here or in Italy at a festival called FAME, her Konbit Shelter days, her Braddock Project with the church in Pennsylvania, her Perly’s Beauty Shop, her epic installations at Jeffrey Deitch, LA MOCA in Los Angeles, ICA in Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, or DIA in Detroit, we’ve reported to you on them all – so you have an idea where this new book The Red Skein will take you. It is great to see the memories and the people all pulled together here cohesively and to understand the skeins that all weave together loosely and tightly.
SWOON: The Red Skein. DRAGO Publisher. Rome, Italy. 2022
Fabio Petani may win the prize for the most murals this season; Not that there is a prize for this honor, except your skill improves and you get to meet more people at more street art festivals…
This one is at the 2nd Edition of the Artu Street Art Festival held this September in Castenaso, Italy. He calls it “NITROGEN OXIDE & ZANTEDESCHIA AETHIOPICA”.
Dudes and dudettes, you KNOW it’s summertime! The flood of paint, legal and illegal, that is hitting walls in cities everywhere and possibly around your neighborhood – it’s outstanding. One artist who’s taking advantage of the good weather this year is Fabio Petani, who seems to bang out a mural every 15 days. Each is a lesson in botany and science, often revealing the plant and its uses in society- aside from aesthetics.
Here in San Gavino Monreale in the Province of South Sardinia (pop 8,700), Petani paints Crocetin & Asphodel, which is likely to be currently in season in many areas in this part of the world, producing something decidedly sweet. When the weather turns cold again Petani’s wall will remind the locals of this warm and lush season.
Petani gives us a full exigesis on his new work, Crocetin & Asphodel:
“The asphodel, a spontaneous plant of the Mediterranean scrub, of which the people of Sardinia have been able to exploit all the properties since the dawn of time, begins to flourish in this period, and perhaps for this reason it has assumed an almost magical value in the culture islander.
Once upon a time, there was no bride who did not have in her kit the baskets of asphodel, indispensable, in many different shapes and sizes for work in the kitchen, for the processing of bread and other foods that in ancient times were called at home.
The stems of the asphodel in fact constitute the raw material for the construction and weaving of the baskets. Furthermore, the stylized flower often recurs in embroidery and weaving works.
But there is a characteristic of the asphodel: from its white flowers, the bees produce a very precious, delicate, very clear, almost crystalline honey with a unique aroma, marketed almost exclusively in Sardinia.
It is rare honey and more expensive than the others, due to its delicate taste it is used in haute cuisine preparations and combined with equally fine foods with a refined flavor”
Indeed, the Grenoble Street Art Festival in France doesn’t care about you unless you parlez français – at least that’s the impression you’ll get from their website and social media. Nevertheless, they have been mounting monumental high-quality mural eye candy for eight editions, and art speaks volumes – so it’s still gratifying to look at the photos.
In the current edition in Saint-Martin-d’Hères, we see a new piece by Italian botanist and illustrator Fabio Petani, who rather brilliantly incorporates the landscape of the majestic Alps directly into his background multi-story mural called Silicon Carbonate & Cattleya Mossiae. At once richly detailed and mistily atmospheric, his sophisticated rendering must have been inspired by the enchanted beauty of the region.
Petani says he would like to thank the Grenoble team for their support and hospitality, especially the volunteers. We give praise to photographer Andrea Berlese for the excellent shots, like this one.
When we consider the role of the citizen in society, the interdependence of every participant eventually comes into play. It determines what direction we go, despite what your neighborhood anarchist might have you think.
Similarly, as one is studying the numerous elements at play in the natural world, the dynamics of interdependence among all the actors is even more apparent and evident. The whole is only possible by collaboration, and the result is often spectacular – perhaps because trees don’t have egos. Or do they?
Study this new illustration-style ecosystem by artists Fabio Petani and Luogo Comune (Jacopo Ghisoni) in Turin, and you’ll think about the showy prowess of the tree during all the seasons and the industrial guile of the insects that are always at work. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but the natural world seems full of characters – like the people you see on city streets. It is an ecosystem formed from need, often mutual.
“Plants need insects, just as insects need plants to be able to feed, find shelter and reproduce,” the artists say in a statement – and they explain that the collaborative process of painting together is an additional layer to the story.
“This theme is further explored from the formal point of view by the artists who have worked in synergy, creating a composition where the two styles mix, interact and compensate each other.”
On the Campus Einaudi and working with the ToNite Project, Petani and Comune say that their compositional interpretation is entirely considered and pertinent to the ecosystem as an interaction between plants and insects. “Here, insects play a non-secondary role compared to the plants represented and are juxtaposed in the composition as necessary otherness for the flora.”
The human-built city has at times been called a jungle, but the concrete and steel environment flatters itself if it really thinks so. The intelligence and beauty present in the natural plant world far outstrips our modern cityscape, centuries after its origination. At least a few artists have been bringing it back to us in murals over the last few years, introducing a calm, lyrical serenity that dives way beneath the conscious, touching our roots.
The young Italian painter Fabio Petani has been reintroducing a natural agenda to cities across Europe for less than a decade – in a way that only a scientist, botanist, and naturalist with a design sensibility could. What is genuinely original is his subtle re-interpretation of the formal conventions of botany, introducing them to a modern urban audience without lecturing – and rising far beyond purely decorative presentations.
In the first hardcover-bound collection of works called Spagyria Urbana, the Dinerolo-born, Turin-trained Fabio Petani impresses with scale, scope, and sensitivity. More impressive possibly is the ease with which he can command his scientific interests and his ability to infuse his works with warmth, into rather artisanal renderings of art.
The book gives sweeping vistas of his large-scale works as well as many small and personal details about his development as an artist and the tight brotherhood of Italian street artists who invited them into their fold, first as an assistant, later as a peer. With outstanding scholarship and imaginary descriptive phrasing, lead essayist Alessandra Loalè brings the artist and the work into context, instilling a greater appreciation in the reader.
The duality of Petani’s combined and complementary styles is captured eloquently and instructively as analogous to the natural forces of life. “The abstract stroke of his first artworks gives way to a further realistic approach in the creation of the compositional layout, which results in a progressively more articulate combination of simple graphic elements,” she writes “a symbol of a logical conscience which brings order to the whole structure – and botanical subjects.”
“The latter is represented in more recent pieces in two guises: a pictorial reinterpretation, defined by brush strokes and specks of color, and a more realistic graphic approach, which hints towards the typical etchings featured in botanical illustrations, enriched by the meticulous descriptions of thoroughly researched details that are proper to each species.”
In an age of awakening to our true impact on the natural world, it is perhaps more surprising that many 20 and 30-something urban artists are not drawing our attention to its power, intelligence, and inherent beauty. Petani brings the urban passersby straight to the source unflinchingly and with all the respect Mother Nature deserves.
Fabio Petani “Spagyria Urbana”. Torino, Italy. 2021. Texts by Alessandra Loale. Layout by Livio Ninni with translation by Mauro Italiano.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
