Best Street Art in VIENNA

Vienna is famous for great art: whether it’s Art Nouveau, Expressionism, or the controversial Viennese Actionism – the city has stood for internationally famous art for decades.
But street art?
You’ll be surprised: Vienna has some of the most beautiful large-format murals I’ve seen in recent months.
In this post, I invite you to join me in searching for the best street art in Vienna.
Get ready to be amazed!

Vienna

Vienna has an everchanging and compelling past. Whether it is the Congress of Vienna where after the Napoleonic wars, Europe’s layout and faith were determined. Or Empress Sisi and her tragic story. Might be the gilded years around the turn of the century when Vienna – next to Berlin and Paris – was the center of the artistic and intellectual avant-garde.

Progressive painters like Egon Schiele, innovative designers like Koloman Moser, inventive architects like Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, exciting musicians like Arnold Schönberg, and of course the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud make a compelling case for the city’s worldwide reputation.

It is absolutely possible to visit the city and focus exclusively on its sugarcoated and romantic sides. But it’s the rich mix of century-old Imperial culture and architecture, once über-modern and therefore often misunderstood innovations of design and style, petty-bourgeois attitude, and at the same time crazy artists and progressive intellectuals that make Vienna one of the world’s most exciting cities.

Street Art in Vienna

Have you already admired all the great works in the Kunsthistorisches Museum? Visited Klimt and Schiele in the Leopold Museum and the Belvedere? Then it’s about time to get to know a different side of Vienna. The city also has modern sides that are not the least bit tacky and bathed in tradition. In fact, Vienna has become a street art hotspot in recent years. Whether locals or international street art celebrities: Many of the best muralists have left their beautiful traces on Vienna’s walls.

As in other metropolises around the world, urban art in Vienna has developed from illegal spraying into an independent, respected art form. Homeowners and businesses have realized that a painted wall is not vandalism but art.

The center of Viennese street art are the 6th, 7th, and 8th districts to the west of the city center – a bit like Vienna’s Greenwich Village. There are lots of freely composed graffiti and stencil images to discover. Private owners and the city have made space available for larger-than-life murals. However, street art can no longer only be found on the street, but, contrary to the name, is now also presented in galleries such as the Urban Space Gallery and the Galerie Oxymoron.

Between Art, Vandalism, and Commercialization

Bitterly, not everyone has respect for the talent and work of great artists. It’s almost physically painful to see how disrespectful vandals smear their tags or other nonsense all over the elaborately created murals. Even if commissioned works are mostly not subversive, they earned their spot in the cityscape. The accusation of selling out original street art is not an argument for destroying the work of others.

The conflict between the legally operating artists and the sprayers hunted by the police is understandable. The art market has expanded through international recognition, and companies that want to present themselves as hip and up-to-date are authorizing muralists to do commissioned work.

Although I’m not an absolute street art purist, I also found advertising murals made by street artists in London, for example, to be a total commercialization of a former subculture. In Vienna, too, the artist Perkup painted a 250 square meter advertising mural for a mobile phone provider. Before condemning him for this, one should remember that celebrated artists such as Alfons Mucha and Toulouse Lautrec used to make a living by creating advertisements. Today, those posters are exhibited in museums. Art and the art market are a wide subject.

In 2014, Calle Libre was founded in Vienna. It is a festival for urban art that organizes spaces for murals but also other forms of street art on curated walls and squares in many places in the city.

It should also be emphasized that, in contrast to other cities where street art is extremely male-dominated, there is a striking number of creative women like ANNATOMIX, FAITH XLVII, and Frau Isa beautifying Vienna’s walls.

The Artists

While in London’s gentrified and therefore now tragically hip districts such as Camden and Shoreditch, tourists move in groups through the streets decorated with murals, hardly any visitors make their way to the 13th Arrondissement of Paris, to Copenhagen’s Nordvest neighborhood or to the satellite town of San Pablo in the north-east of Seville.
Or have you ever heard of these neighborhoods before?
Yet, that’s where you’d see some of the most powerful urban art.

And what about Vienna?
Well, there is no street art worth mentioning in the historic center within the so-called Ring. The greatest density, as I wrote above, is to the west of the center. Individual works by Kobra, Roa, and Case McClaim, for example, are even further out and really not easy to reach for those unfamiliar with the area. I have therefore omitted them in this post.

Since the best works presented in this post are a bit more spread out in Vienna, I will introduce their creators in alphabetical order. At the end of the post, you will find a map on which they are listed including the street and house number.

AlfAlfa

Nicolas Sanchez aka AlfAlfa is a Venezuelan artist. He now lives in Toronto.
After he began studying art, he finally found his passion for mural painting at the School of Beaux-Arts in Uruguay. To perfectionate his comprehensive training, he participated in art residencies in many places around the world. After all, for four years, he was a travelling salesman artist. AlfAlfa left his creative traces in 25 countries on three continents.

AlfAlfA’s preferred technique is drawing based on etchings and engravings. He creates perspective effects simply by varying the thickness of lines. Mystical hybrids of humans and animals are his favorite motifs.

AlfAlfA develops his designs using digital collages. He then translates the finished motif into lines onto the wall – or canvas – mostly in a striking black-and-white coloring.

ANNATOMIX

ANNATOMIX was born in 1984. She is a sound engineer by profession. When she became a mother in 2010, she realized that her job with long hours and late nights was not compatible with her new situation.

Having been creative all her life, ANNATOMIX began drawing and sketching after the birth of her son. She also had a great interest in graffiti and street art. In 2012 she sprayed her first mural. She has been working as a full-time artist since 2014.

ANNATOMIX draws inspiration for her motifs from a variety of sources, but her main focus is on the relationship between humans and nature.

Her style is strongly influenced by geometry and architecture. Hence, her earliest characters consisted of geometric three-dimensional shapes like cubes and evolved from there. Not exactly optimistic, her animals represent the future of nature: artificial, robotic, and shaped according to our ideas of aesthetics.

BEZT – ETAM CRU

BEZT aka Mateusz Gapski was born in the Polish town of Turek in 1987. He is one half of the ETAM CRU duo. The other half is Przemek Blejzyk aka Sainer, who is one year younger. The two met while studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz. After graduating in 2010, they began painting together.

The ETAM CRU is now one of the most sought-after mural painting duos in the world. In recent years, they have designed countless large-format murals and taken part in various street art festivals and exhibitions in Europe as well as in the USA.

In their predominantly figurative works, ETAM CRU combine realism with fantasy. They depict their protagonists set in mystical fantasy worlds that are intended to make you think but, above all, make you smile.

You can see another mural by Sainer in my post Best Street Art in BRUSSELS.

C215

Christian Guémy aka C215 was born in Bondy in 1973. He holds several degrees i. a. from the prestigious Sorbonne in history, architectural history, as well as art history. During his studies, Christian Guémy contributed to the encyclopedia of the Compagnons du Devoir, a highly recognized French guild. Later, he worked for a union, as an export manager, and in finance.

Good for us that he finally ended up as one of the most powerful French muralists. Yet, most of his works have a socio-political background: He portrays Holocaust survivors and communist resistance fighters and speaks out paints against police brutality and anti-Semitism.

Today, C215 lives in Vitry-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. This suburb is also a veritable art mecca with an incredible number of murals; which is undoubtedly C215’s merit. Hence, if you have the chance to visit Vitry-sur-Seine, you should definitely check it out.

I’ve introduced C215 already in a former posts on urban art in Paris.

Evoca1

Elio Mercado aka Evoca1 was born in the Dominican Republic in 1984. Today, he lives in Miami. Although self-taught, he is widely recognized as a figurative painter, street artist, designer, and activist. In his touching pictures, which are inspired by his youth in the Dominican Republic, he combines art with humanity.

His signature style is stunning photorealistic murals designed to appeal to the social conscience and raise awareness of impoverished people’s everyday hardships.

Shepard Fairey aka OBEY

Who doesn’t know Mr. Frank Shepard Fairey? Whereby, his pseudonym OBEY might sound more familiar to you. Born in 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, this street artist, graphic designer, and illustrator has been around for quite a while. He also appeared in the legendary street art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop by British artist Banksy 2010.

His first claim to fame was his André the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign. In 1997, he co-founded the design agency BLK/MRKT, specializing in guerrilla marketing campaigns. Customers were none less than Pepsi, Hasbro, and Netscape. In 2003, Fairey left BLK/MRKT and established his own agency called Studio Number One. Also, this whizz-kid launched the fashion label OBEY clothing in 2001.

Fairey achieved greater notoriety during the 2008 US presidential election campaign with his iconic poster HOPE for Barack Obama. It is actually only the most famous of a series of posters that he designed for the Obama campaign. Eventually, he endorsed Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2016 United States presidential primary.

I’ve introduced OBEY already in many former posts on urban art such as Berlin, London, Málaga, and Paris.

FAITH XLVII

Faith XLVII was born in 1979 in the South African city of Cape Town. She began painting in 1997 and has no formal training. She creates sculptures, video installations, tapestries, drawings, and murals, obviously. In her work, she addresses ecological, social, and political problems such as the failure of neoliberal policies in her home country of South Africa.

Since 2006, Faith XLVII has traveled extensively so that her work now embellishes more than 50 cities worldwide.

Her first museum exhibition was at the Musee Des Beaux Arts de Nancy in France. Since then, she has shown her work in solo exhibitions in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Miami, New York, London, and Paris.

Faith’s son Keya Tama was born in 1997 and is also an artist. Apart from his real name, he has also worked as Cashril Plus and Jack Fox.

Gaia

Andrew Pisacane aka Gaia was born in New York City in 1988. In 2011, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

His street art has been featured in several books on urban art. Gaia was listed as Forbes 30 Under 30 in Art and Style in 2015. As a Fullbright scholarship holder, he studied and painted in New Delhi and Bogotá.

In addition to his own art, Gaia curates projects and advises brands, organizations, and government agencies on creative urban projects. Although Gaia is based in Baltimore, he spends most of his time painting murals around the world. This meant he was able to leave his creative traces on six continents.

Golif

Bold lines are characteristic of Golif’s comic-like style. Some of his works are also more reminiscent of East Asian calligraphy. Whatever the case, he almost exclusively portrays powerful figures and faces with hard, indomitable expressions.

Although Golif has an ambivalent relationship with the street art scene, he still works in a field that would traditionally be assigned to street art.

Nevertheless, his work is extremely diverse. The spectrum ranges from sculptures to graphics and paintings. He particularly likes to use deep black ink for his concise strokes. In contrast, many paintings also contain large areas of shades in clear colors.

Golif uses brushes and rollers as well as an airless device for his giant works in public spaces. His most complex piece is called The Observer. He created this ground image with the size of about six football fields in 2016. Golif used around five tons of paint for this monumental work. Due to its enormous size, the painting is best viewed from space!

In the Austrian town of Korneuburg, he painted an agricultural warehouse with his characteristic figures on an area of ​​2,500 square meters. In 2017, Golif created two figures on the sides of a concrete tower within four weeks. The work can be seen from the Danube bank motorway. In 2019, the artist completed two murals with a size of 15 × 25 meters on empty house walls in Vienna’s 15th and 17th districts.

By the way, to learn about the currently largest mural in the world, check out my post The World’s Largest Mural in Incheon.

HUARIU

HUARIU was born in the Portuguese city of Portimão in 1992. At the age of eight, he began reproducing and reinterpreting faces from photographs. Since 2014, he has been making the world a little more colorful as a street artist. Whereby, that’s not true at all as he specializes in the use of black and white. In addition to walls, HUARIU also works on canvases with spray and acrylic paint.

His admiration for other cultures has opened up a completely new spectrum of motifs for him: Arabs and Africans, Hindus and Buddhists are his source of inspiration.
He does not try to give his works a specific meaning. Instead, he wishes they were seen with the heart.

Jana And Js

Jana from Austria and French Jean-Sébastien Philippe met in Madrid in 2006. Since then, they’ve been living together and working as a couple. Inspired by urban spaces and its residents, in their paintings, they merge architecture with portraits.

Based on their photographic work, they stencil polychrome murals in different sizes. They have a very emphatic way of relating to people, their emotions, desires, and concerns.

Jana And Js often decorate unexpected spaces like semi-finished or dismantled structures, train tracks, poles, remnants of concrete, old trucks, and wood piles.

After having lived in Madrid and Paris, Jana And Js relocated to the small Bavarian village of Laufen close to the Austrian border.

I’ve introduced murals by this creative couple already in a former post on urban art in Paris.

Helmut Kand

Helmut Kand graduated from high school in 1966. Eventually, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and later in Rome and London. There he organized the public burning of his paintings at the opening of his exhibition in London’s Ewan Phillips Gallery in 1969. The ashes filled into bottles were then exhibited.

Numerous exhibitions in art galleries, museums, as well as public collections worldwide made Kand internationally known already at a young age. When Muscat became the cultural capital of the Arab region in 2006, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos invited one artist from each from 40 countries. Helmut Kand had the honor of representing Austria.

The Austrian Post Office issues an artist stamp every year, and in 2010 a painting by Helmut Kand was selected.

Honor where honor is due, and it’s always refreshing when someone acts as a so-called enfant terrible. What’s not so funny is that in 2023, Kand was accused of sexually abusing a model he hired for a photo shoot about body painting. As a result, some events with the artist were canceled.

KOZ DOS

Koz Dos comes from the Venezuelan capital Caracas where he graduated in painting and fine arts from the art academy UNEARTE.

In 2017, he joined Caracas’ urban art scene. There he quickly made a name for himself with his magnificent hyper-realistic portraits.

Koz Dos has a very personal, recognizable style. In his murals, he merges human figures with animals. He often inserts photorealistic human faces into the mouths of animals to express confrontation but also fusion.

Mantra

Youri Cansell aka Mantra was born in France in 1987. He is an accomplished artist and naturalist. While Mantra is equally good at depicting humans as animals, he is absolutely amazing when it comes to insects. They take him back to his childhood garden. Therefore, he now creates absolutely exquisite depictions of butterflies and moths on urban walls. Usually, those are rarely seen in urban areas.

Mantra’s portrayals of these enigmatic beings are precise down to the last detail. However, he usually depicts them as lifeless exhibits and as if displayed in showcases. This is his accusatory reference to the loss of biodiversity.

Mantra’s works can be found in cities such as Bogotá, Cancún, New York, and Turin, as well as in the Amazon rainforest and North Korean bushland.

Perkup, Friend.192 & RUIN

Paul Riedmüller aka Perkup not only looks back on a long career as a street artist. He also has a lot of experience in drawing, graphic design, and animation. Perkup takes images and icons from pop culture, video games, and films as models. He then uses computer software and digital collage to create sketches in a hyperrealistic style.

Perkup has a great talent for painting in almost any style. He adapts his favorite painting techniques to the motif. In his artworks, Perkup combines figurative and abstract expression, creating intricate and complex compositions. Graphic patterns meet photorealistic motifs.

So much for Perkup. Despite a detective’s diligence, I was unable to find any relevant information about his two partners in crime painting. I’ll stay tuned and would be very grateful for any information.

Rip Off Crew

I already mentioned at the beginning that there are a noticeable number of women in the Viennese street art scene. One of the fiercest crews is certainly the trio of Linda Steiner, Käthe Töpfemann, and Mariella Lehner, who founded the all-female Rip Off Crew in 2018. Since then, they have painted some amazing murals together. As a team, these ladies inspire each other artistically and personally and have also learned and grown together.

Because of its high-profile nature, street art will always be an effective platform to address issues of all kinds. And indeed, visibility is an important step towards empowerment.
Women shouldn’t be afraid to take up space, wherever and in any way possible!
It is important that not only female artists are recognized, but also aesthetics and themes that are considered feminine. Initially, the Rip Off Crew was also tougher in their style because they felt they had to adapt to the male-dominated street art. But it turned out that many people appreciate the softness and even a certain cuteness when it comes to street art.

Roo

Already the iconic slogan Roo has a crew. It consists of mostly animals, which vary in color and personality. Some are friendly and others will eat you reflects the playfulness and quirky humor of London-based artist Roo. Yes, she too is a woman beautifying the streets of the world and probably one of the best mural artists who focus on detailed illustrations. Roo’s work enchants every viewer with its humor and sweetness.

It was her brother who inspired her to venture into the world of graffiti and eventually street art. As a teenager, she first drew graffiti lettering on paper. It wasn’t until 2006 that Roo began to take her art seriously – albeit, serious and Roo don’t seem to fit in the same sentence. She moved to Birmingham for professional reasons where she got in touch with many other artists, including her brother Miles.

RUIN

RUIN was born in 1990 in Austria. He lives in Vienna where he studied at the University of Applied Arts. He has been painting in public spaces since 2003, albeit, he sprayed his first graffiti at the tender age of 13.

What he learned during his art studies always impacts his partly graphic, partly figurative creations. Let’s face it: Talent isn’t everything, and in-depth training doesn’t do any harm.

RUIN is a fixture in the Viennese street art scene. However, his works can be found on walls all over Europe. Yet, he also works on paper, canvas, and other media.
In workshops, he awakens the enthusiasm of children and teenagers for painting and drawing, and as co-founder of the Oxymoron Gallery, he gives young artists a platform.

Stinkfish

RUIN collaborated with Stinkfish to create the mural above. Stinkfish was born in Mexico but spent his childhood in the Colombian capital Bogotá.

At the turn of the millennium, he began making stencils. However, it would be another three years before he created a very complex piece of street art in Bogotá. This image was created in memory of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

For his murals, Stinkfish photographs randomly selected people who don’t always know he’s taking a photo. He then converts these photos into stencils, which he then uses in his wall art.

For its murals, Stinkfish prefers to look for locations with high traffic and good visibility. Stinkfish prefers to work on older walls, usually those that have unevenness, cracks, and humidity. It is also important to him to create his works in a neighborhood where people live, rather than in areas full of shops and businesses.

So far he has made his creative mark in Argentina, Colombia, England, France, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Austria, Russia, and the USA.

I’ve introduced a mural created by Stinkfish in my Post Best Street Art in BRISTOL – Part I: From Nelson Street to Stokes Croft.

Isa Toman aka Frau Isa

Isa Toman aka Frau Isa lives in Vienna and is a member of the legendary THE WEIRD Crew. Not only is she one of Vienna’s many painting females, she also primarily paints women. In a way, this comes full circle.

Frau Isa – which simply translates to Misses Isa – places her demure-looking ladies in old-fashioned surroundings that give them a faded, melancholic flair of the 1940s and 1950s. She also works a lot with symbols and icons which help the viewer piece together the story.
Frau Isa describes her style as naive and playful.

I introduced a mural by other members of THE WEIRD crew in my post Best Street Art in Porto.

VIDEO.SCKRE

The artist duo VIDEO.SCKRE consists of Julia Heinisch aka VIDEO. She was born in 1990 in the Austrian city of Linz where she studied sculpture at the art university. She also studied art history and philosophy at the University of Vienna. Her partner in Crime Art is Frederic Sontag aka SCKRE. He was born in the German city of Ludwigsburg in 1988 and studied scenic painting. He is currently working at the Kammerspiele in Munich.

Since 2018 they have owned a studio together in Linz from where they realize national and international mural and art projects. Of course, they also turn public space into their studio and use it as a field for experimentation. The artist duo receives inspiration from nature and their travels, observations, and experiences.

When working together, VIDEO’s task is to sketch the motifs quickly and intuitively. She focuses on the characters of animals in motion. SCKRE later combines them with his ornamental forms and abstract landscapes.

ZABOU

Zabou was born in France. Even in her childhood, she spent a lot of time drawing and painting. After moving to the UK to study, she began painting on the streets in 2012. Since then she has taken part in many urban art festivals and numerous projects. She has created over 250 murals in 22 countries around the world.

The basis for Zabou’s hyperrealistic portraits are photos, which she then re-interprets with an emphasis on their expression and emotions. She mainly works with spray paint and transforms them into expressive black-and-white portraits.
She is interested in stories and is inspired by both everyday life as well as the places where she paints, obviously.

In addition to her murals, Zabou also spends time honing her skills in her studio. She has exhibited her work in France and the United Kingdom, including several exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery in London. In March 2022, the gallery presented the artist’s first solo exhibition.

I’ve introduced ZABOU in my post on urban art in London.

On Instagram

To dig deeper into the subject and see more of the amazing art the above-featured artists have created, you can just check out their Instagram accounts:

How to Get Around

Although the very center of Vienna, hence, the old part within the so-called Ring road, is not very large and therefore easily walkable, you have to venture westwards to see the city’s most powerful street art. Therefore, you probably need to travel by public transportation for instance to the main train station Westbahnhof. From there, you can actually walk to many of the murals that I’m introducing above. Yet, you’ll need to rely on public transport to get to some others.

As in basically every European city, there is a comprehensive network of subways, trams, buses, and regional trains. A single trip costs 2.40 €uros. With this ticket, you can travel for 80 minutes in one direction, hence, it’s not good for a return trip. However, for 80 minutes, you can hop on and off if you always continue in the same direction. So if you plan your street art hunt wisely, it can be quite a bargain. However, if you’re planning on travelling a lot, a day pass for 8 €uros is a good deal.

Cycling

Obviously, cycling is a great way of exploring cities, and the public rental bikes that you’ll find practically in every larger city around Europe make things really easy and fun.

The city of Vienna has WienMobil bikes available for residents and visitors. The 3,000 rental bikes are waiting for you in all 23 districts of Vienna. The WienMobil bike is a 7-speed smart city bike with an integrated electronic frame lock. After registering for free, you can scan the QR code with the Next Bike App. The standard tariff is €0.60 per 30 minutes. Payment is made via credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal.

Map

This map should help you to find the murals I’m introducing in this post. Clicking on the slider symbol at the top left or the full-screen icon at the top right will display the whole map including the legend.

Amazing Street Art is only one of the awesome things you can do on a visit to Vienna. Hence, for more inspiration and information, check out my post

VIENNA – visited by streetcar

However, if you have only up to 24 hours to spend in Austria’s extraordinary capital, I have you covered in my post

24 hours in Vienna

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