Speto

São Paulo / Brazil

Starting as early as 1985, Paulo Cesar Silva, or Speto, can be considered one of Brazil’s street art pioneers. For his artworks he creates figuratively distorted animals and humans, characterized and inspired by the free-spirited style of folk art. Speto’s work can be found on his collaboration with URBAN NATION on Project M/10 in 2016. […]

Biography / Speto

Starting as early as 1985, Paulo Cesar Silva, or Speto, can be considered one of Brazil’s street art pioneers. For his artworks he creates figuratively distorted animals and humans, characterized and inspired by the free-spirited style of folk art. Speto’s work can be found on his collaboration with URBAN NATION on Project M/10 in 2016.

Speto’s work is heavily influenced by Brazilians pop and native culture, especially ‘Cordel Literature’, little D.I.Y books sold by street vendors. Their style of drawing transfers heavily into his street art and murals and gives them a unique, woodcut-like look. Being skilled in different styles he started blending both, traditional hip-hop culture based graffiti and his illustrations and artworks he had been drawing for a Skate magazine. With his work, Speto aims to create bold murals that can be seen and read from a distance and gather attention for their simplicity and playfulness. The self-taught artist, who cites his grandfather, who was a samba musician, his catholic mother, Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Muhammad Ali as influential factors of his art, has had enormous commercial success working with brands like Coca-Cola, yet continues to work as a street artist.

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