Biography
Born in the 1980s in Senigallia, on Italy's Adriatic coast, Blu is an anonymous artist who has been based in Bologna since the late 1990s. He began with spray-painted graffiti in the city's historic centre in 1999, then developed his signature technique from 2001: monumental murals painted with rollers mounted on telescopic poles, featuring giant human figures that range from satirical to dramatic.
His work addresses sociopolitical themes — consumerism, corruption, war, oppression — through a visual language close to comics and video games. In 2008, he created Muto, a stop-motion short film assembled from hundreds of wall paintings across Buenos Aires, which won the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival in 2009 and has been viewed over ten million times. That same year, he painted the exterior of MOCA in Los Angeles, a mural promptly whitewashed for its political content.
The artist has painted on the West Bank separation wall alongside Banksy in 2007, decorated the facade of Milan's PAC, and worked across Latin America and Europe. In 2016, he erased all his own murals in Bologna in protest against the municipality's commercial exploitation of his work — a radical gesture that became emblematic of his uncompromising stance.
His work addresses sociopolitical themes — consumerism, corruption, war, oppression — through a visual language close to comics and video games. In 2008, he created Muto, a stop-motion short film assembled from hundreds of wall paintings across Buenos Aires, which won the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival in 2009 and has been viewed over ten million times. That same year, he painted the exterior of MOCA in Los Angeles, a mural promptly whitewashed for its political content.
The artist has painted on the West Bank separation wall alongside Banksy in 2007, decorated the facade of Milan's PAC, and worked across Latin America and Europe. In 2016, he erased all his own murals in Bologna in protest against the municipality's commercial exploitation of his work — a radical gesture that became emblematic of his uncompromising stance.
The site contains a total of 4 artworks by Blu in 3 countries.
This profile has been viewed 318 times.
Artworks by Blu have been viewed 751 times.
