We arrived into Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, by train and shortly afterwards hopped on a tram to our hostel. As the tram pulled away from the station it briefly ran parallel to a wall which divides the rail tracks from the main road. The wall was covered with colourful murals and I made a mental note to return to it during our exploration of Zagreb, for a closer look. Or, as Mark would put it, to feed my ever-growing obsession with street art!
It turned out that this street art which stretches over half a kilometre along Branimirova Street is an officially sanctioned local initiative of the kind we are coming across more and more frequently during our travels. It’s great to see local authorities giving space over to young artists to allow them to be creative in an environment which is both legal and public.
We discovered that the organisation behind much of the street art in Zagreb is called Street Art Museum (MUU).
The Branimirova street art wall was the first project organised by MUU, and was labelled “the new face of Branimirova Street”. It launched as a public competition, judged by renowned artists and changed the face of 500 metres of public wall in the location we’d spotted, close to the railway station.
It was a bit tricky photographing the street art – Branimirova Street is a busy main road and in order to capture the murals it was necessary to stand on the opposite side of the road separated from it by a constant flow of cars, buses and trams. Team work was required with one of us poised with the camera at the ready and the other looking out for gaps in the traffic. “Now!”. The images below are some of the ones we managed to capture without being run over!
Photographing the Street Art in Zagreb:
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Branimirova street art wall
Street art usually isn’t my thing, but there’s some real talent there.
As you might have worked out, I’m a big fan 😉 however, I do think there can be a fine line between art and scrawled graffiti and not everything labelled as street art is amazing. But there is a lot that is and it seems to be getting more and sophisticated and the artists doing it, more and more talented.
Great pictures! I love street art and I love that there’s an organization advocating for these artists and providing them a space to display their talent.
Yes, we’re coming across more and more organisations and even local authorities that are supporting and finding space for these artists and it’s fantastic to see.
I love Lonac . A street artist from Zagreb. I wrote an article about him. You might be interested . https://streetart360.net/2016/12/23/lonac-talented-croatian-street-artist/