The Best Murals of 2013 (So Far)

Summer is the season of street art. In the UK, the organization Art Everywhere plans to decorate the country with 15,000 billboards of British art this August. In Vienna, Chinese street artist DALeast just painted an electrifying creature mural. Even though the mural festival season hasn't hit yet, the most famous street artists all over the world have been busy this year. From Gaia's animal paintings in South Africa to Crash's New York mural on the Bowery Wall, this is a truly global tour of new street art. Here are our picks for The Best Murals of 2013 (So Far).

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The Best Murals of 2013 (So Far)

Location: London

This is a great piece to match Disk's name and our increasingly pixel-centric world. Admittedly, I don't love the portrait aspect of this piece, but I think the lettering is awesome.

photo by Joseph O'malley64

Location: Los Angeles

They have two very different styles, but Kofie and El Mac work well together. Both of them are so well-known for going big that I like this successful, modestly-sized piece all the more.

photos by Todd Mazer

Location: Philadelphia

Definitely the most traditional mural to make this list, Legendary (known around Philadelphia as The Roots' Mural) has quickly been embraced as a new community landmark for its celebration of one of the most celebrated and talented musical groups to come out of Philadelphia in their generation. Sometimes all a mural has to do to be great is generate community pride, and Legendary does that very well.

photo by Steve Weinik for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (© 2013 City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program/Amber Art & Design Featuring Tatyana Fazlalizadeh)

Location: Katowice, Poland

Müdwig is one of those underrated artists' artists. He's well-respected by other artists and those in the know, particularly in the UK, but hopefully this mural will get his work out in front of more people so that he builds up a well-deserved fanbase among the general public.

photo courtesy of Müdwig

Location: Girona, Spain

I can never tell if MOMO is really old school or super cutting-edge with his style. I guess all trends come and go in cycles, so maybe he's both. With this mural, he painted a wall that most artists would never be okay with. It's not flat enough. But for MOMO's work, I think the patterned wall adds to the piece. It's not common that this is a positive attribute of a mural, but the piece looks like it could be finished or maybe just half-finished. MOMO left me hoping for more on the wall, but that's a lot better than overworking it and overpowering the space. Instead, I look at this mural and sense some ideal of what it could be if it were filled out a bit more. It's a strange feeling to get from a mural.

photos by Boris Hoppek

Location:Haverford, PA

I invited LNY to paint this mural, and I couldn't be happier with the result. It strikes a very good balance of having complex metaphors to work out and still being visually striking at just a glance.

photo by RJ Rushmore

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

I would have never thought of Ever and Roa as two artists who could collaborate with one another, but this piece is so great that I'd love to see more from them. The artists used the space well, separating their work and playing with the fact that they had two sides of a wall to paint rather than just using the wall as a blank canvas and painting something that could have been painted anywhere.

photo by Graffiitimundo

Location: Katowice, Poland

This mural is simple, bold, and direct. When towns get hit with mural festivals where maybe 20 massive walls get painted every year, it becomes easy for work to fade into the background of the city, but this mural is going to stand out for a long time to come.

photo by SpY

Location: Mexico City

Paul Insect and Sweet Toof did some great work together and separately during a recent trip to Mexico City, but it's this piece (and a few others in the same series) by Paul Insect really stand out to me. Paul Insect's characters seem to fit naturally on the wall.

photo by Paul Insect

Location: London

I think a lot of people probably prefer Conor Harrington's work when he really goes all out with filling in the background, but I usually prefer it when he lets the original wall shine through. While obviously time-consuming and serious work, this mural almost looks more like a massive sketch than one of the over-produced murals that tend to dominate mural festivals.

photo by RJ Rushmore

Location:Vitry, France

This mural is in the town of Vitry, France, which is where C215 lives, so it's pretty safe to assume that C215 linked up Jaz with this spot. If stenciling extraordinaire C215 is finding him a wall, that alone should give you a hint that Jaz is a talented artist, and Jaz did not disappoint here. Although he's probably more well-known for his more colorful work, even in monochrome, Jaz's abilities shine through.

photos by Franco Fasoli

Location: Vodnjan, Croatia

With this mural for the Boombarstick Festival in Croatia, Aec pulled off the difficult feat of making something not particularly site-specific still manage to look at home on a massive wall. Could I imagine this very image as an Aec canvas? Sure, but on a wall Aec has created a window to another world and played with perspective, bringing a bit of the surreal to our everyday lives.

photo by Aec, courtesy of Boombarstick Festival

Location: Katowice, Poland

This piece was painted at the same festival in Katowice, Poland as SpY's THINK mural from earlier. As much as I love SpY's piece, Peter Fuss takes the cake. Like SpY, Peter Fuss is simple and bold, but he's just a bit more subversive and funny. People hate to be told what to do, but they love to resist when told things like "sit down and shut up." Unfortunately, festivals are not always the most welcome places for subversive political expression, so I'm glad this piece went up at one.

photo by Peter Fuss

Location: Navajo Nation, US

The detail in this piece is incredible, and yet it still looks equally impressive and interesting from farther away. I love that the figure is against a red background, because it can probably be seen in silhouette even at night. I've seen artists paint super-detailed murals that go a few stories into the sky, and I always wonder why. Nobody is ever going to see that detail. From the ground it just looks like a blur. Pieces like this, where this is detail and technical ability, but the image is not lost from afar, really impress me.

photo by Alexis Diaz

Location: London

You might think that you just can't bear to see one more massive black and white animal painted by Roa. After all, they seem to be everywhere. But then he does something like this piece on London's Southbank Centre that reminds us all why we love his work so much. It's been said that murals can energize public spaces or walls, but few do so like this one, with two animals caught mid-flight and possibly mid-fight. Interestingly, Southbank Centre is right next to the National Theatre, where Banksy once painted the word "BORING" in massive letters with a painted-filled fire extinguisher.

photo by surreyblonde

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Hyuro was given a challenging space measuring just over 270 meters in length, but she did it justice. This mural is not just a flowing abstraction or character upon disjointed character. Plenty of artists could and would have done something like that, but Hyuro honored the wall she was given by making an animation of sorts, where the series of images along the mural can be viewed in succession and all relate to one another.

photo and video by Henrik Haven

Location: Taipei, Taiwan

With most people getting their daily dose of graffiti online, it pays to make work that's gonna go viral, and Zoer and Dems are on some next-level shit with this piece. If only it were available as a GIF, too.

photo and video by CSX TV

Location:Boston

When Barry McGee was given this prime space along a Boston highway as part of his show at the ICA Boston, he could have painted a giant TWIST logo. After all, that's what he writes when he writes graffiti. Instead, McGee painted the names AMAZE and OKER. AMAZE is his assistant, a younger man who stayed more active on the street after McGee went into semi-retirement. OKER is a British writer currently serving a prison sentence for graffiti. However, much like OKER's work, I don't think it's likely that he'll have a show at the ICA Boston anytime soon, so I love that McGee took this opportunity to put OKER up in an act of solidarity and in acknowledgment that OKER and AMAZE have both been more active than him on the street in recent years. The mural fits in well with the much smaller graffiti that lines the other walls around the highway.

photos by Geoff Hargadon

Location: Honolulu, HI

Jeff Soto doesn't paint murals all the time, but when he does, they are usually pretty impressive. Combine him with the young and technically flawless Nychos, and you've got something really special. Like a good collaboration, this mural shows of both of their unique styles while still coming together as a cohesive whole.

photo by Ken Harman

Location: New York

Crash is the first train-writing New York graffiti writer to paint a piece at the wall on Bowery and Houston since it's been reincarnated as New York City's premiere legal mural location. He did a big, bold mural that is absolutely perfect for the location. Too much detail, and you have to look at the wall up close, where you can't see the thing all at once. Crash painted a piece that can be seen in all its glory from across the street, and it's the sort of pop image that the everyday tourists are going to love even if they don't know anything about graffiti.

photos © Jaime Rojo for BSA

Location: South Africa

This piece in South Africa by Gaia started out as what would probably have been his best piece of the year. Then he took it a step further and really made it interesting. After his piece was partially and very poorly buffed by a local resident, Gaia returned and fixed it up. But rather than repaint the thing, he used the buff marks in his revised piece. Not only did Gaia make the best out of a bad situation, he improved upon his original piece. The text is in Afrikaans and translates to "to erase revisionism."

photo by Gaia

Location: London

Nunca painted this piece out in South London, away from the hipsters and street art fanatics in Shoreditch, but I really hope people still make the trip out to see it. With such perfectly detailed hatching and crosshatching, Nunca blows away many street artists with more name recognition than him. I like this particular piece, because the content is so different from what we normally see from Nunca (and it still works). So many street artists rely on repetitive iconography, because it's easy and popular, but here Nunca shows that he doesn't have to do that.

photo by RJ Rushmore

Location: New York

This tribute to Martha Cooper for her 70th birthday was organized by How and Nosm. I can't think of anyone more deserving of such a birthday gift than Martha Cooper. This generation-spanning set of legendary street artists and graffiti writers went all out to pay tribute to one of the most important people in the history of graffiti. The mural only lasted a few days, but for me it's one of the murals this year.

photo by Jaime Rojo

Location: Los Angeles

With a paint roller as his primary tool, Anthony Lister painted one of the best murals in all of LA. This piece is relatively simple with lots of empty space and none of the mindblowing detail that you might see in a mural by someone like Nychos, but sometimes less is more. Lister really captures the movements of a ballerina in just a few strokes, and that movement brings life to the wall.

photo by Theonepointeight

Location: London

This has to be one of the greatest ad disruptions I have ever seen. Street art is itself almost inevitably advertising, and so are many ad disruptions. But with this piece, Mobstr stepped back as much as possible and handed over the keys to the public, encouraging them to take control of their public space by going so far as to actually provide markers and a blank canvas. The Scribble Board was covered in a matter of hours. Mobstr could have done a Banksy-esque billboard with a slogan like "advertising sucks," but people hate to be force-fed opinions. That's why we hate ads in the first place, right? Instead, Mobstr gave people an opportunity to experience a little bit of public space without a billboard and where they were in control and let the public come to their own conclusions, which is a much better method of teaching. Besides, I saw a few people writing on The Scribble Board and it just made everybody smile. What's better than that?

photos by RJ Rushmore