30 stunning Street painting & awesome wall murals

Street painting has been recorded throughout Europe since the 16th century. Street painters in Italy are called madonnari (singular form: madonnaro) because they often created pictures representing the Madonna. In England they are called screevers.

In 1972 the first International Street Painting Competition was held in Grazie di Curtatone, Italy. The goal of the competition was to record and publicize the work of (those thought to be) the last practitioners of this traditional art form. The eldest painters were already in their 90s. The 1972 festival resulted in national recognition of the validity of the art form, causing a new generation of street painters to emerge.Within a decade these artists were using commercial and handmade pastels to create copies of well-known masterpieces. Over the years, the competition has drawn younger painters and larger crowds. The festival remains popular and street painting festivals around the world are modeled on the event.

The first street painter in the US was  Sidewalk Sam, who began painting in the streets of Boston in 1973.

Over the past decades various artists have developed new styles based on the work of artists such as Andrea Mantegna, M. C. Escher, Michelangelo, Hans Holbein and others. Today this work is called anamorphic or 3D, although in the past it was called one-point perspective.