Palma Street Art

22/12/2022

The façades of the buildings in Palma’s old town are veritable jewels, works of art per se, and some of them are over a century old. But they stand in the city’s streets alongside buildings that are deserted, or shuttered and awaiting renovation. It’s on the cracked walls and dilapidated doors of the latter that local artists of international fame, like Joan Aguiló, Grip Face, Abraham Calero, Carolina Adán, SOMA or the Me Lata collective display their talent and breathe life into these places, with the beauty of struggle and protest expressed through street art.

The iconic images of the large-format murals of Joan Aguiló are now present all around the world. His interventions can be seen in countries like Germany, England, Denmark, India or Lebanon. But it all began in Mallorca. With images of babies having their bottle, little girls eating fruit or a mother helping her child into the sea, Joan Aguiló tries to “reflect everyday moments of life on the island, using figures Mallorcans can identify with”.

David Oliver, better known as Grip Face, has also crossed borders with his urban art. His style is spontaneous and naïf, furtive and visceral. “I am drawn to the feeling of the ephemeral, not knowing when your work will vanish, or whether someone will paint over it”, he says.

Altruistically and randomly. That is how Abraham Calero got into street art. It was during an intervention in Son Gotleu (an outlying neighbourhood of Palma) that he felt “an incredibly strong attraction to urban art, a modality that gives me equilibrium and good vibes”. Some of Abraham’s interventions are on buildings very close to Rialto Living. “Street art makes me feel free and independent. I do what I want, as I want to and when I want to”, he explains.

ART IS LIFE is the signature Carolina Adán applies to each of her street interventions. A mural she painted on the house of a friend who was going through a difficult time “changed her life and mine”. Her style is figurative, beautiful, direct and unmistakeable, in harmony with the signature that defines her inner world.

The colourist works of urban artist Marc Peris, more widely known as SOMA, captivate people with their messages with an ethical slant and designed to raise environmental awareness. His book Pintamurs (wall painter) was conceived to incentivise creativity in families, with fun, metaphorical images that serve to “brighten the walls that isolate us from each other with colour”.

Not all of the urban art of Palma and Mallorca is focused on painting on a wall as though it were a canvas. One example is the collective Me Lata which, using empty food and drinks cans, transmits simple, optimistic messages, with the aim of making those who see them feel better.

And to a large extent, that is what art is for: transmitting emotions and feelings, as occurs with the Rialto Living exhibitions that present new local and international artists approximately every month, and which can be visited by anyone who comes to the store.