Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra

Whether traveling to New York, Moscow, or Sao Paulo, you will definitely recognize the art of a famous Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra. He can’t be confused with anybody else – his huge wall murals are a kaleidoscope of colors, manifestation of blue, red, yellow … Eduardo Kobra was born in 1976 in Sao Paulo. His artistic talent was noticed in 1987, first on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, and soon in the city. Following the developments that urban art has gained in Sao Paulo, he develops the “Walls of Memory” project that seeks to transform the urban landscape through art and redeem the memory of the city. This project is an amalgamation of nostalgia and modernity, resulting in scenographic paintings, some monumental, recreating nostalgic moments of the city.

The extraordinary artist Eduardo Kobra was raised in a low income neighborhood of San Paulo called Clear Field. As a 12-year-old, he started missing classes, instead he enjoyed street life with an older group known as “Hip Hop”. Later he joined a graffiti crew, and that was his lucky chance, though his passion for graffiti resulted in expulsion from school.

His parents moved to Bauru, where he resumed his formal education. He didn’t like studying, because his thoughts were always in drawing either on paper or in the streets. Moving away from graffiti to street art, his first critics were people, walking along the sidewalk and watching him draw. The turning point in his career occurred after his arrest, when the judge was so impressed by the wall paintings that Kobra’s sentence was to paint a mural on the police station wall.

Street art was becoming respectable. In December of 2013, Kobra, along with his crew members, was commissioned to paint two murals of legendary contemporary artists – Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol, along with music icons like Tupac and Biggie. While Kobra and his team worked for three weeks painting the two murals, thousands of onlookers watched, some for a few minutes, many for hours at a time, and some returning every day until the art was completed. Television personnel from PBS filmed and recorded an interview with Kobra and his crew for the USA in 2014.

eduardokobra.com