Any discussion of street art in Kraków should begin with the country's long, lauded tradition of graphic art, with large-scale Polish advertising and poster design known internationally for their high artistic quality; anyone who makes the strongly recommended visit to Kraków’s Poster Gallery (ul. Stolarska 8-10) will easily discover why. The art form actually flourished under communism and can still be commonly seen in the stylish high-minded aesthetics of posters all over the country’s walls and signboards. With such a knack for graphics, it stands to reason that Poles would have a penchant for street graphics as well. And they do. In Kraków, as in other cities around PL, street art is currently going through a tidal wave of popularity. While the city – long known for its conservatism – may still lag behind cities like Warsaw, Wrocław and Katowice, which have established themselves as the torchbearers for urban art in PL, in the past decade new street murals have become a common sight around Kraków as well. More restaurants and businesses are turning to artists to playfully embellish their spaces with original art created directly on the walls, and city authorities have even taken the surprising step of sponsoring some large scale murals around the city centre. In fact, the emergence of street art as a growing and legitimised artistic discipline has created an interesting dichotomy in Kraków’s urban landscape between both sanctioned and unsanctioned works of ‘graffiti art’ and the prolific gang signs, slurs and football-related graffiti that city paint crews have targeted in their war on ‘vandalism.’
Ranging from large murals to small stencils, those with an interest in Kraków's street art will have little trouble tracking it down, and we’re making it even easier. In addition to cataloguing and GPSing street art addresses throughout the city centre below (track them down using your smartphone!), we’ve also marked each place with a spray can symbol on the maps in the back of our print guide, so you can literally use them to give yourself a tour of Kraków’s urban art. We encourage you to do just that, and check out some of Kraków’s alternative artistic visions.
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