Reykjavik Graffiti – See the Streetart of Iceland

Reykjavik is full of graffiti. We do have some of the dirty malicious vandal type but Reykjavik inhabitants have found the way to get the vandals to stop. Even vandals tend to respect property that people care about. Well cared for houses and walls rarely get tagged. If you get an ugly tag on your wall, painting over it straight away is normally the answer. The vandals to see that their mementos don’t stick around. They won´t bother tagging the place again. Sometimes this isn’t quite enough though. Big walls with no windows get tags, electricity and phone connection boxes get ugly looking graffiti all the time. The solution: Get a proper Reykjavik graffiti artist to paint your wall at will.

Here is great solution and awesome example of Reykjavik Graffiti.

It got tagged a couple of times but it was painted it right back and it has been left alone for years now. And even in the middle of a snowy winter we always have some flowers outside.

Better than this, right?

Here are a few of the pieces of art:

The best known artist is one Sara Riel. She is responsible for this dragon:

That wall always had tags on it but since the house owners got Sara to paint a graffito of her own design, I don’t think a single tagger has performed on site. If you look very closely, the Toy Spreader from our last article has added their logo inside the space from where the dragon originates!

A couple more of Sara’s art:

Some artists also use the street instead of walls:

A recent favourite:

Outside Ölstofan, a pub with some pretty good beer and a weekly pub quiz (sorry, only in Icelandic) this example of Reykjavik graffiti can be found.

Interview with a Reykjavik graffiti artist

An interview with Sara and a few other graffiti artists can be found here, I really miss the mushroom graffito shown in that article, that house has been torn down! Condé Nast has some photos too.

These photos are of course just the tiny tip of the iceberg. All in all, this has made our city all the more inviting and I certainly don’t miss the ugly tagging that used to be in those spaces and the others that have now exciting graffiti art!