After a week-long conference of design universities in Santiago, a five-day visit to design universities of Bogotá an Cali in Colombia, and some days of horse riding on the Andes in Valle Melado, I am finally in Valparaiso “paraiso”, my favourite city in Chile. My head is brimming with stories that should have been told days ago – from Santiago, Bogotá and Valle Melado – but I choose to start from where I am now.

Counting on that each image speaks more than a thousand words, I shall display some visual evidence of what has happened on the walls of this particular small neighbourhood since my last visit a year ago, evidence that conveys growing appreciation of graffiti as an art form and underscores the never ending attraction, prosperity, vitality and renewal of the art itself.

Signs of growing appreciation

House owners who repaint their houses integrate good graffiti by carefully painting around them so as not to spoil them.

Along with the growing world-wide fame of the painters, legal pieces are growing bigger, more sophisticated, more laborious and time-consuming than ever.

Graffiti artists are getting more and more commissions, and not only as artists but also as teachers, specialists, promoters, decorators, designers…

Signs of living art

Old paintings fade and deteriorate rapidly and are replaced by new ones.

A clean surface in a visible place is unbearably attractive: on Saturday, 1st of December there was a newly repainted slice of wall where I remember having seen (and even photographed) a piece a year ago (must find it in my photo archives!). On Sunday, the following day, there was a big face of a lion staring at me on that same wall!

A photo gallery of all these and other new pieces that caught my eye in the neighbourhood of my hostal during the first days of my visit to Valparaiso.