Highly recommended!
We travel the world 300+ days a year and we shoot pix of street art where ever we go. It's a rarity for us to find local area experts able to tell us the back story for works we spot. But this tour is an exception.
Buenos Aires (B.A.), Argentina has a vibrant public art presence. Street Art is a reflection of the history, wealth or lack thereof, joy or strife and many other aspects of life in a given area. You'll find murals, smaller paintings, and graffiti in all 48 barrios. Each barrio has programs, some official, some not, to sponsor public murals on these buildings.
The brutal military dictatorship that ran Argentina between 1976-1983 left the economy and country in disarray. Anger, strife and despair ooze through some works. Swaths of abandoned buildings in each barrio across the city cry out as evidence of a horrific past and end up the custodian of murals. But these murals only last so long -- old buildings are torn down every day.
BA Street Art Tours will show you some of the biggest murals by international street artists like Blu, Fintan Magee, Alice Pasquini, Ren, Kiptoe and Quack Zean. Guides explain the growth of street art and graffiti in Argentina, the stories behind the artworks, different painting techniques as well as the political themes that stem from some works. BA Street Art was founded in 2009 and is closely connected to the street art scene. The support local artists and have organized and sponsored more than 200 murals in the city of Buenos Aires. Funds received from our tours also go towards funding future mural projects.
Matt Fox-Tucker, principal at this business, is a professional writer and co-author of Textura Dos: Buenos Aires Street Art, a hardcover book available on Amazon. If you take this tour, you'll get Matt or Lucia or others they may mentor and delegate to from time to time. The tour will cover some of the street art on display in Textura Dos.
We were fortunate to have Lucia as our guide for our tour. She's easy to spot: you'll see her grasping a copy of Textura Dos against her torso on this tour. But she won't open it -- she knows the back story behind the artworks backward and forward. She has the book with her to show you reference information. She's a personable and knowledgeable resource for you, the traveler.
This tour is terrific. You'll find yourself torn between listening to your guide and trying to get unobstructed shots of artworks for the time available at each location. There's too much to see on this tour, and, in B.A. in general. You'll need several weeks in B.A. just to see many of the street art works.
We snapped over 1,000 photos of street art during our stay in B.A. A few examples are below
But if you're going to pick a street art tour in B.A., pick this one. They are professionals. Go and enjoy!
p.s. We recommend Matt's book but have no affiliation with him or the sale of his book. We recommend simply because it is a solid report on street art in B.A. We were lucky enough to get Matt to deliver of copy of this book to us at our hotel, the InterContinental Buenos Aires, an IHG Hotel.
Noto Bene!
This business does not operate as a storefront. This is a home-based business. Thus, there is no address to visit to buy tickets.
Tickets for a 2.5 hour tour cost about $22. You can contact the owner by Email: info@buenosairesstreetart.com, Telephone: +54 11 3564-9988, or you can book a tour via their website: https://buenosairesstreetart.com/.
Hours:
Tue
3:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Thu
3:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Sat
3:00 PM - 5:30 PM read more