What Is Street Art?

Street art is raw, unfiltered creativity that turns the city into a canvas. It’s not just about spray paint on walls—it’s stickers, stencils, paste-ups, murals, and even yarn bombing. It’s art for everyone, outside galleries and museums, often born in the moment and made to provoke, inspire, or simply beautify.

What makes street art special? It’s alive. It interacts with its surroundings, tells stories, and sometimes disappears as quickly as it appears. It’s rebellion, beauty, and expression all rolled into one.

A Quick History of Street Art

Street art didn’t just pop up overnight. Its roots go way back—think cave paintings and ancient graffiti. Humans have been leaving their marks on walls for thousands of years, whether for artistic expression, storytelling, or protest.

Fast forward to the late 1960s and ’70s, and graffiti as we know it today began to take shape in cities like New York and Philadelphia. Back then, it was all about tags—simple signatures scrawled on walls and subway trains.

By the ’80s, graffiti evolved into more complex pieces, and artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring brought it into the mainstream. Around the same time, stencil art and paste-ups began to appear in Europe, especially in cities like Paris and London.

The 2000s saw street art explode globally, thanks to artists like Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Invader. Today, it’s a mix of everything—political statements, social commentary, and pure visual joy. Some pieces are commissioned, others are guerrilla-style, but all of them add color and life to our urban spaces.