We are pleased to present a detailed interview with street painting artist Eduardo Relero, living and working in Spain, known for his anamorphic street paintings.
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Here is what Eduardo shared with Streetpainting.tv:
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What is your occupation?
Lately my job is to make anamorphic street paintings. Till recent years I have done portraits, murals, engravings, sculptures, and paintings, but since I´ve uploaded the anamorphic street paintings on the internet, the demand of this work has grown over the other art forms.
How many years have you been street painting?
I´ve started painting portraits in my country, Argentina, during College Holidays in the summer. I went to Brazil when I was 21, where I drew portraits in the squares, restaurants, airports, in the middle of the Ouro Preto Carnaval, and in a Bolivian funeral home. Then I traveled through Peru, Chile, the North and South of Argentina. These were three big trips paid for by drawing in the street.
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How did you first get interested in street painting?
Then in 1990 I went to Rome because I wanted to see the Art I’ve always admired, and the social situation of my country made it hard for me to develop myself there. When I arrived I saw artists making money through street paintings that they copied from the classic paintings. "Madonnari", they are called.
Immediately I got some chalk and started doing the same. I desired the Madonnaro lifestyle. I´ve met my colleagues and friends of adventures during those times. I´ve participated in many festivals and I painted in the streets of Rome. I went to Austria with another painter, a friend, Jairo Rojas Garavito, with whom I´ve shared sorrows, joys, travelled through Italy and shared the tough and romantic life of a street painter.
At the same time I was studying painting at the museums. I did copies at the Capitolino Museum, The Doria Panphili Gallery, and Archeological Museums. I used to go to the Belli Arti Academy, to the nude model classes... We studied theory and argued with Gregori Provenzano, an artist, philosopher and friend. We did many experiments, besides exhibitions, like in three shows of Frank Sinatra (Rome, Marino and Pompeii), the Canadian Embassy at Rome... etc.
I´ve always known that Art is one of the highest forms of thought. I´ve never thought that only by street painting that I could develop my work. I was a Beaux Arts student, Philosophy and Architecture in Argentina. I had a head full of intellectual pretensions that went from Avant Garde aesthetic to the complicated and dull contemporary Art. But now, watching those "big" things of the past and from the other side knowing the contemporary artist inner workings´. Students that emerge by the thousands from Colleges, pushing each other, in many cases without any intellectual honesty, and probably an impossibility of thinking for real - an artistic fact in a cultural level where the Art doesn´t play a crucial role anymore at the world´s representation - and doesn´t aspire to it.
Changing to Publicity 30 years ago would´ve meant High Treason; today it´s recommended without even knowing the cynicism it involves.
Among the theories we used to discuss was critiquing hyperintelectualism, in place of the contemporary art and its distance with the public. Street art resolved, in a way, (with that, maybe fake, immediateness) this horrible problem that was also polluted with the mercantile speculation consubstantial with the so called ‘Art Critic’.
The Madonnari were mostly young men without formal artistic training that lived (as did I) from the money the pedestrian gave to them.
They were works of devotional style, that sentimentalized the spectator, made with an overloaded way in the modeling, perhaps by lacking technique, but also because being made in the street the effects were exaggerated to catch the people´s attention- a public less educated and more distracted than the museum´s public.
But I, - and some like Jairo or Franco Prisco -, did copies from paintings we thought were the best artistically, and in a way not taking the pleonastic (redundant) aesthetic from the typical "Madonnari". This made us unpopular among traditionalists; but also admired for our economical suicide.
From 1992, I hadn’t street painted, except in a Festival or sporadically until 1994.
During that time, I concentrated on paintings on easel, murals, engraving and sculpture.
The anamorphic painting I did it in mural detailing, but never as the sole focus, until Swatch watches asked me for a commission of that sort.
I don´t like publicity (I mean I despise what it represents as a concept), but they paid so well that, besides having no money at that moment, I thought that morally it wouldn´t be so disgusting to collaborate on the selling of some little plastic watches- or I made that conclusion because I was paid... Anyway, the mind is tricky...
I did it, it was horrible, especially the drawing. And as the people I´ve met from the Agency at Madrid were wonderful people. Then a Whisky ad came. The sketch I was supposed to do in 3-D was made by another publicity agency- it was horrifying, I felt shame.
I decided to make a blog. I went to Seville, where my mother lived, and started drawing at the corner of her house, in a quiet neighborhood. I drew a huge skull in a well being watched by a sleepy family. I was very nervous, the press came and my mother helped me a lot. Then I went to downtown Barcelona and I did some more in a furtive way. I tried to get a permit but it was so complicated and unlikely to get one, that I took the risk in doing them in an illegal way.
With those street paintings and one other, I started the blog. Due to the bizarre style it naturally happened that:
I scared away the publicists and also those who had in their minds the common and plain image of a 3-D computer´s paradigm of beauty.
Other people called me, who liked my street paintings - and everybody was happy.
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How did you learn to create 3-D street paintings?
I am self taught. I mean, I knew geometry stuff by my technical education; I studied architecture for four years.
In fact the first anamorphic works I did one way, then I´ve changed to another method, and then I ended up doing yet another method. Which means I´ve figured out three methods to make them. I don´t know how the others (street painters), do them, but I see that when the figures are contained in a rectangle, that the enlarged parts are shown less, it´s probably that they are done with an informatics program such as AutoCAD that you can get on the internet. There are many as well done in the painting´s fabric (without CAD).
I´ve seen a Christmas manger in Madrid (Xanadú) that was made in a painting´s fabric with the drawing previously printed on the painting´s fabric (such as a general rectangle that gradually adapts itself to the floor).
But it´s not valid when the figures distort a lot- because when they distort the program gives points too undetermined, as it happens with the kind of drawings I do -That´s why I´ve never used that program.
I tried it with a friend that is an informatic engineer and a sketcher, Javier de Juan, and it was a failure. Well, I could hardly use it, because I hardly know informatics.
Is street painting popular in Spain?
No, unfortunately it´s only popular on the internet and they are only shown by festivals financed by public institutions or cultural associations, or maybe a guerrilla campaign of marketing publicity. In Spain I believe I am the only one that street paints.
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How often do you street paint?
As I´ve said before, I´ve painted from 1990 to 91 almost every day that didn´t rain in Italy, and sometimes even raining, under a galleria.
Then I street painted sporadically until 1994, and during Madonnari Festivals, all over Italy.
In 1996 I moved to Madrid, but there isn’t that tradition over there, so I´ve dedicated myself to painting, engraving, and just around two years ago sculpture in the traditional format.
Street painting in 3-D doesn´t exist as itself. There is this internet phenomenon that happened by chance because some publicity guy hired the street painter Julian Beever (that painted pictures of Cindy Crawford, classics or Lady Di...), to use the pavement as a publicity space. The idea was already seen in Mantova at the Grazie de Curtatone Festival. I have the 1988 program from someone called Everard Munch, who used to do that on the pavement. I want to say that thanks to those spams and publicity bombing that we´ve received from ´coca cola´ and ´ the girl that raises the leg on the swimming pool´, the belief has spread that this is done around the world spontaneously... and they put a tiny box so they collect money from the pedestrians... It´s not like that at all, in Europe it´s absolutely forbidden the usage of the pavement. You need to get a permit. Only once I got one. When I asked again for another one, in Madrid, the bureaucrat denied me the permit.
The absurdity was that they gave permits when the street paintings were for publicity!! In Barcelona - the same and so on in many cities. Society has become right-winged and an ambulant artist is homologated (stereotyped) almost as a beggar. The city is property of the merchants; bars and restaurants take the squares for putting their little tables and little chairs, and the City Hall gets money from that. In Italy the tradition of the "Madonnari" it´s almost lost. It´s held just a little bit by the Grazie de Curtatone Festival, because they have a touristic meaning for that tiny place in Mantova.
Madonnari existed in Italy, someone in Austria or Switzerland, etc, it´s what Beever used to do in his country (by the way, I wonder how he painted in England where it rains so often), but this new phenomenon I don´t see it in the street. I see paintings on the walls, graffiti type, different styles more or less and that´s it.
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In what countries have you street painted?
I have street painted on the pavements of Italy, Spain, almost all of the Canary Islands, Austria some time.
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Do you have a favorite subject in your street paintings?
In general I prefer they have a satirical and critical tone. I also like to make works such as that one I call Corpus, with a dramatic tone, in general with human figures.
What is a typical size and how long does it take you to create a street painting?
The size is more or less 4 meters x 8 meters to 12 meters for the bigger ones. When you do everything in the street you got to work fast, because you never know when it´s going to rain or there are the space is hired only for few days, etc. Usually it takes me around two days and a half. I´ve started by doing them in one day and a half, but now I´ve done some more complex and they took me three days in some.
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What is your approach to starting your street paintings (do you use a sketch)?
Yes, I do use many sketches that I have previously selected.
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What tools do you use when working?
I use dry pigments, water and some glue, very little. I paint with large pencils (the same elements I use for making pastels, but instead of rabbit´s glue, the one used for pastels, I use faster glues). And I give it a small pastel touch here and there.
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What is the most difficult aspect of street painting?
For me, with no doubt the most difficult aspect of street painting is the people that speak to you, distract you, and offer their opinion while you are working. I think that many think that street painting is like changing the wheel of the car (I´ve seen people standing 30 cm next to a violinist playing and yelling at him at what is he playing...). Being there is being exposed to the misfits, the ones that nobody listens to, the drunks, madmen, dogs, outlaws, lonely old men, religious fanatics, amateur painters with their work for showing you. On the other side, the crowd gives you wings, faith, strength for finishing your work; it´s a contradictory feeling. Then, in second place, there is the stress of the weather (let’s hope it doesn´t rain). And thirdly- the surface’s quality.
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What do you enjoy most about street painting?
I enjoy to make a work with all those conditions settled, the space, the light, the materialization of your own idea, to free the capacity and creative forces, those are among the most enjoyable and satisfactory things on life I´ve known…
To make an anamorphic drawing, which is very calculated, slow and rational, has got nothing to do with graffiti (I did that in Argentina, before coming to Europe; the morbidity(risk) of perpetrating the forbidden made me paint the corner of the Chief Police Department in Rosario... 9I remember the high cardiac tension). Wonderful anecdotes with the people. Unsuspected people you meet. Cities where you arrive, new for me, some marvelous, though I don´t have too much time for knowing them...
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Do you usually work alone or with other artists?
I always work alone. I don´t dismiss that I might hire someone for some work, but to paint with four hands... I´ve done it a few times, and only in murals.
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How do you feel about the ephemeral quality of the art form?
I don´t mind it´s ephemeral, the pictures remain- Maybe I´ll do some work in a permanent support.
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What is your favorite street painting you have worked on to date?
Sincerely I would have liked to have more time to paint, without stress, to finish them better, but I think that the one I call "Corpus" (I did it in 2 days, 12 meters) with a little bit of more work it would´ve been close....
What are your views on street painting as a contemporary art form?
Here in Europe, as the Culture is in hands of the Public, the private and the art galleries have fallen into suspicious... There are Contemporary Art Fairs, which are fairs of private galleries, of course, but the aspiration of many of them is to enter the Public Art Museums, because they give prestige, a shield against critic, and therefore quotation and status. At the same time there is an affair between the famous galleries and the Culture bureaucrats, that museum´s proliferation plague all across the old continent. Due to the lowering tax, the Banks and Foundations don´t stop fabricating these artifacts by architects delighted to release their teenage dreams.
So called Gehry or Nouvel... absolutely childish. That way they also lower duties morally, because in theory they are not making it only for the money. It´s a way of publicity ´with a good cause´. And so, among all these colleagues they´ve organized and distributed all the territories of the Being, and what is not under the private or public simply doesn´t exist. That´s why people see badly the ambulant artist, as ‘homeless’.
There are Cultural Acts that organize some street painters or street theatre or swallow-fires (sword swallowers)... or anything that might be called street. Organized by the "Exec. City Hall of ..." with bigger ads than once a whisky brand put at my work. In fact more than once I´ve erased them with Photoshop for being unsuitable and hissy. It´s a war, as sponsors have to get more and more medals and pins on the picture. You know this about publicity... And when it looks it could make some cash, the galleries may call you. There have been sales of pieces of Bransky´s murals. I´ve been called by a Milan gallery to have a show.
There is the street art when you can live from something else or when you live with your parents.
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How do you feel about experimentation with the street painting art form with new methods of collaboration other than the traditional?
I love to see street art on telephone booths, which are so ugly, and especially on those luxurious industrialized European style bus stops, train stops, bridges and kiosks. Not being done with the "end of the century" style, Parisian or Viennese, etc, the economical abundance is the only thing exhibited, with the material and the mechanical tech (the elevators from the Reina Sofia´s Museum, Calatrava style...), which acquire an aspect of luxe and often are just iron and glass. I like very much that manual spontaneity over the failure of the Public seriousness.
I don´t like they only paint on the periphery and socially degraded zones only. I´d like them to paint those emblematic buildings from well known reputed contemporary architects (those are the really degraded zones), or the horrible abstract sculptures of many squares and streets... there you can see the conservatism of youth, a sad characteristic, at least so early.
