Cloudmen and Firebirds

People who followed my travels through Latin America back in 2009 and 2010 may remember I am a little graffiti obsessed. Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Valparaíso (Chile) were particularly rich hunting grounds and I had a great time wandering around these cities, snapping away.

I guess this has been a habit of mine for a while – when I lived in London I was based in the East End which is also a good place to see great street art (There’s a lot of work by Banksy, Eine and a bunch of other people I don’t know – just because I like it, doesn’t mean I’m super-knowledgeable right?!).

I spotted this one in the San Telmo neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.

I saw this one in Valparaíso, a city covered in colour and great graffiti.

Well, since I’ve been in Rio I’ve kept my eyes open and seen some really nice stuff. There are probably 5 or 6 artists that I really like and most of them have works scattered across the city. I enjoy discovering new pieces when I find myself on a new street or neighbourhood. It’s also cool when something new pops up overnight.

So, today I thought I’d show you a few of my favourites. Today’s featured artists are Lelo and Piá. Lelo is responsible for the ‘firebird’ characters, Piá does the ‘cloudmen’ – they do work separately, but is is their collaborations that have really caught my eye.

I spotted this one as I was wandering during my lunch hour today.

Also near my work (this is on Rua São Clemente in Botafogo). This one is actually a triple collaboration between Lelo, Piá and Lucas (I guess Lucas did the gloopy green stuff in the middle).

This is my favourite. Here you can see the guys themselves. I grabbed this photo from their flickr page because when I went to take a photo today there was an ugly street stall in the way…

Pretty cool right? Like I said above, there are quite a few other artists I really like, so every so often I may do a little post to show you their work. To finish off I will leave you with a short video of Lelo doing his thing in my very own neighbourhood of Santa Teresa.