Mural in the making

A few artists were hard at work on this mural exhibition in Steglitz. A new urban art gallery opened in Berlin just a few weeks ago. Perhaps this work was tied to that? More murals of all kinds can be found at Monday Mural.

Lucha libre

This mural looks like a masked lucha libre fighter to me. I haven't heard of the artist, but they must be well-known as the Pilpeled website is filled with other works. It's Monday again and you'll find more murals on Monday Mural.

Obey and other signs

I recently learned that these Obey signs are the work of well-known street artist, Shepard Fairey. He's a South Carolina native, but built his street cred as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design with his Andre the Giant has a Posse campaign. If you're looking for them, you'll find these posters in cities all over the world (I've seen quite a few in Berlin, now that I know what they are!).

Fairey has come quite a way since his student days, his most famous work is probably the Obama campaign poster, but he's also built up a successful clothing line, simply called Obey. If you're interested in his work, you can see more here. And of course, you'll find more signs of all kinds at the weekly linkup, Signs, Signs.

Look back

These two murals are some of the best known large-scale works here in Berlin. They were painted by street artist Blu in 2007-08 in reaction to changes to the working-class neighborhood, Kreuzberg. The mural on the right also celebrates the reunification of East and West Berlin, if you look closely, you'll see that one of the figure's fingers make the sign E and the other a W.

Sadly, the walls were painted over in December 2014 at the request of the artist in protest of the further gentrification of the neighborhood. These buildings were sold to developers and are slated to be torn down to make room for luxury apartments. You can read more about the development plans here and you'll find more murals at Monday Mural.