Street art tour in Lavapiés
I had the chance to discover a new Madrid, a Madrid that I’ve always admired without knowing nothing about it, while when I was living in Milan I could recognize names and techniques of these works of art.
I am talking about the street art surrounding us everyday in Madrid, especially in the Lavapies area.
Three hour street art tour in Madrid with an exceptional guide, Javier from CoolTourSpain.
We met up just outside the Atocha Station, where the tour usually starts. Javier gave us the big picture immediately, and it was not only about the things that we were going to see as different stops, but dividing the tour experience in three main pillars: history, technique and names. It’s funny because it is not an ordinary tour where you listen the speaker like an audio book with a monotone voice. Javier knows how to entertain and make it easier to learn keeping his audience engaged.
In the first stop of the street art tour in madrid we discovered together «La Neomudejar, Museo y centro de artes de Vanguardia». This place is Amazing, a real discovery for me that I am always looking for special art exhibitions. And I need a Spanish word to describe it, it’s «raro», which means unique with something special.
The first pictures here above are all from La Neomudejar, from the outside to the inside, where the main topics developed through the art collection. The freedom of expression that the directors of this Museum have built in these years can give to the invited artists the total freedom to express themselves and their art through taboo topics likes the politics, the media and women.
On the first floor where the permanent collections and the artists in residence laboratories are, I was totally surprised to see a work of art dedicated to Luigi Pirandello. One of the most important Nobels for Literature won in Italy. You can see a picture of a flower wall with different paintings
The street art tour in Madrid moved from Atocha back to Embajadores for the walls of «La Tabacalera», an old cigarette factory reconverted as cultural center. I’ve already been around the wall and inside the Tabacalera for an exhibition in November, but discover each wall one after another with the sneaky information that Javier have collected is a different thing.
The walls on the outside are called «Muros» and have been painted by renewed artists from Spain and from other countries with the topic of the urban nature in 2016. My favourite is the one by Casassola with this naked woman full of flowers.
From the Tabacalera to Campo de la Cebada I started developing a different sensibility to the techniques and the names of the artists, recognizing them in all the different shapes.
We saw, and you can see in the pictures above so many different techniques, that we might even don’t see while walking, like E1000 (read Emil in Spanish) that uses the gates or the house door to reproduce his name buy colouring online a part of the gate.
Last part of the tour at La Cebada was very interesting too, because it’s a place that I know and walk through everyday, without knowing the names of the artists, or how the Cebada works.
I can’t wait to discover more about the street art in Madrid, also because there will be important festivals in the next months, where all the community of this incredible art will be reunited.
For more information about the tour visit Javier Website.
