Street painting has been known around Europe since the early 16th century. The term street painter came from Italian word “madonnari” because most of the artists’ drawings represented the Madonna.

These artists – madonnari – were people who lived a life of travelling and freedom. The artist would travel around the country from city to city leaving their creative masterpieces on sidewalks in public squares and in front of churches. Often people passing by would leave the artist a bit of food with an occasional coin.

For several centuries the artists were reproducing simple images with rough and minimal materials, before  the Second World War disrupted these traditions and the number of artists became significantly smaller.

It was only in the year 1972 when the first International Street Painting competition was held in Italy to gather the last remaining practitioners in the traditional art form that things started to look up for the madonnari. The amount who took part was remarkable, with the oldest painters being in their nineties. The results of the 1972 competition were nationally recognised as an art form by the Superintendent of Culture. Street art was back on the map.

Over the years the festival has attracted larger crowds and drawn younger painters to come forward.

In 1983 an American artist Kurt Wenner developed a new art form known as anamorphic or three-dimensional paintings which have amazed the general public throughout the world. This new invention has brought the ultimate style of design in to the street artist world and in 1984 this new form of art was documented by the National Geographic in their winning movie “Masterpieces in Chalk”. That same year the artist won the title of Master Street Painter at the yearly organised competition in Grazie, Italy. By 1985 the artist had created his first three-dimensional paintings at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

In 1987 Kurt Wenner and Manfred Stader introduced the art of street painting to California’s Old Mission, Santa Barbara. This was one of the many events based on the Italian festival in Grazie which had spread the anamorphic street painting style around the world and has inspired many world known street artists, encouraging them to continue practicing the delivery of images and culture to the ever changing public.

With the recent multimedia developments of the twenty first century, artists are now able to spread their art through the use of generated video, web blogging and podcasts.

This gives the opportunity for all street painters, festivals and the public to view not only the artist’s latest works or festival appearance but have the opportunity to see why the artist is street painting and to also encourage other artists to step forward and reveal their skills.

Links to artist sites:

• Kurt Wenner: http://www.kurtwenner.com/
• Julian Beever: http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/