History of street art

Where did it all start? Well stencils have been used as far back as the Roman times and the first known book to be printed using stencils was the Bible! Actual street art as we know it has been around since the 60’s. It has come under many names from urban art, wall art, graffiti, graffiti art, and stencil art to name a few. It has predominantly originated in New York where the spraying of ‘Ding Dong’ trains by black gangs was a nightly exercise. Graffiti sketches would be practiced and refined during the day and sprayed at night. This led to different graffiti styles being created and from simple tags came intricate shadow 3 dimensional styles, bubble, mechanical, gothic, and many more. These early urban artist are considered the crusaders of the graffiti world which up until recently has been very much an underground scene.

One of the first graffiti artists was TAKI 183 who used to tag the subway trains and walls of NYC as he worked as a foot messenger. On 21st July 1971 the New York Times ran an article on him called "Taki 183" Spawns Pen Pals. This was probably one of the single most important article every written on street art. His fame led to thousands of kids copying his tag and creating their own all over New York and across America, this in turn led to competitive tagging. Kids started to develop their own signature tags and the most prolific become heroes in their neighbourhood. Tagging and graffiti quickly became a way for people to express themselves and a way for kids to communicate. Julio 204 was another early graffiti artist but he did not get the attention that TAKI 183 got mainly because he only used to put his tag up around where he lived. These two graffiti artists are arguably the two most important and influential street artists of the early graffiti art and without them it may never of reached its height today. After TAKI 183 and Julio 204 urban art and tagging has grown and grown. Some people went out and bombed entire subway trains and lines others started doing throw-ups which consist of an outline with a single layer of fill colour. Some people dedicated more time to creating large scale paintings and images with huge amounts of detail and 3-D effects, while others developed their pieces into very intricate and usually hard to read lettering and words known as Wildstyle. All of these graffiti styles can be seen today.

It was often considered a nuisance or vandalism but in today’s world it has become much more acceptable. This is primarily due to a street artist called Banksy. Love him or hate him Banksy has managed to take graffiti street art to the masses. His political and thought provoking grafiti art has become increasingly popular and has led to thousands of graffiti prints being sold some for ridiculous sums of money. So popular is his work that buildings with ‘a Banksy original’ on it have had their value increase! So many street artists now have the recognition that they deserve. Here are sum you should know:

• Obey • Armsrock • Bast • Bigfoot • Banksy • Blu • Borf • Blek le Rat • C215 • D*Face • Espo • Fafi • Faile • Gaia • Hely • Invader • JR • Spaz Mat • Chris Stain • Swoon • ZHE155 Zevs • Sickboy • Mode2 • Mudwig • Unkown • Cyclops • Aiko • Alex One
All of these artists have amazing work and have all been influential in the graffiti world.
Today wall art, graffiti art, graffiti paintings posters and street art prints can all be bought from websites and artists all over the world. Wallbomber.co.uk has graffiti art for sale as limited edition graffiti prints and urban art canvas as well as original street art produced by artists such as unkown, ZHE155, and Hely and many more.