Núñez i Navarro is trying how to make building walls stop being an impersonal and grumpy element in the streets. More than ten artists have participated in an initiative by the real estate developer and construction company that transforms the walls that protect the works with urban art, the vast majority located in the Catalan capital and with some occasional releases in its metropolitan area. In this way, areas that tend to go unnoticed or even boring are embellished, improving the environment with just a few brushstrokes.
The NNWallery project had the intervention of local artists such as Brosmind, Danide, Laia Lopez, Maria Llovet, Sagar and Marina Capdevila, all selected by Norma Editorial. In the different murals they have created, they have been asked to capture the vision they have of Barcelona. The cost of each work is around 30,000 euros. At the same time, work was also done on the doors and shutters of the car parks, thus arriving at thirty works of urban art.
The Núñez i Navarro initiative, already replicated by other companies, started in 2018, when the graffiti artist Pez made his first intervention in Sant Joan Despí, with a mural 40 meters wide and 3 meters high. This type of urban art on building walls is ephemeral and lasts as long as the work takes to complete. In Pez’s case, it was scrapped as recently as early September of this year.
After focusing on local artists, the company made its first international foray at the hands of Germany’s DXTR. In the Camp de l’Arpa, on the corner of València with Rogent, the artist has captured the image he has of the Catalan capital, with protagonists such as the Sagrada Família, the Arc de Triomf, the beach and the sun, as well as bloodletting and the underwear. All of this, under his particular style, “like it’s the world of Disney but strange”, according to his account. His mural, 50 meters long and 2.5 meters high, will be visible for the next three years, until the condominium under construction by the architectural firm OAB is ready.
While he was painting it, DXTR, the pseudonym used by Berlin illustrator Dennis Schuster, watched as neighbors approached him to see what he was doing, both young and old. Even a girl gave him a drawing. “It’s not common at all,” he observes about the response to the first work he did in the Catalan capital, especially thinking of the rejection he received when he painted in some areas of his hometown.
