Street Art Belgrade - Kosančićev venac Multi-Cache

Street art gallery

Belgrade is slowly turning into large street art gallery with the number of murals and stencils growing bigger day after day. You will notice it almost everywhere in the city, in building hallways, school yards, on numerous walls and in passages.

Street art appeared in Belgrade just a few years ago, but soon it became mainstream - widely accepted among the lovers of this art form and art in general. In the early 2000s, artists started painting graffiti and murals at various locations across the city (the most popular was the wall surrounding the Serbian Oil Company storage opposite Ada Ciganlija). However, during the last five to six years, stencil technique and stickers became highly popular and consequently artists using those techniques received more publicity, and their works were presented at various exhibitions, workshops and in books about street-art in Belgrade, and even at some international exhibitions (Berlin, June 2012).

A brief history of street art

The beginning of the street art was not so simple and easy because it was often confronted with the lack of understanding of the community and the city authorities. Besides, many of the early works were repainted with works of other street artists who obviously had no respect for their colleagues. Surfaces used for street art include old neglected buildings, abandoned entrances, street poles, pavements, moreover you can also see them on new and well-kept buildings, including the official state institutions.

Street art deals with various subject matters such as politics, social issues, criticism or sometimes presents a personal attitude towards a certain issue. The main goal of the artists is to draw attention and provoke people to share their opinion about the work - whether positive or negative.

After the release of the Street Art Belgrade book, filled with a number of works from Belgrade artists, we realized that street art is indeed an important Belgrade landmark. Some of these works really deserve a place in each city tour. Naturally, we saw Geocaching as a great way to achieve this and that is how the “Street Art Belgrade” cache series was created.

Special credits also goes to colleague geocacher  Arizona Smith who inspired us with his Zagreb street art caches.  

This cache will take you through the neighborhood called Kosancicev venac, where you’ll see some of the works from “Belgrade gallery”

Stage 1

The city that ate greenery

At 6 Pop Lukina Street, there is a wall facing Brankova Street, hidden by a small gas station, a huge portrait of the metropolis devouring the greenery.
Within the project “Super Wall”, which was part of Belef 2009, Belgrade became richer by another mural done by a world artist. His name is Blu and he is an Italian artist who hides his identity under that pseudonym, thus giving the advantage to art, not to the creator.
Blu uses buildings in world metropolises as his canvas. Instead of a brush, he uses a roller attached on a long stick. He replaces oil with the facade paint.
Impressive is the list of cities whose walls he painted with his messages. And he also left one in Belgrade. All of his drawings look like, because they carry the same criticism of the consumer society. They only differ in form, because they follow the architecture of the building, emphasising the uniqueness of each place.
The mural on Pop Lukina Street shows a negative impact of humanity on the environment – it displays a huge human image, which instead of teeth has buildings and is about to devour a tree, the only painted detail on this black-and-white image.

The wall across this mural is filled with graffiti.

A= How many orange sheep can you see?

Stage 2

In this small street there is a number of interesting graffiti. At this location you’ll see a graffiti of famous scientist Nikola tesla.

B= How many letters are there in the signature of the graffiti artist?

Stage 3

Next stop are two interesting graffiti known as “Non-Alignment” created in April 2015. Nearby is the Park to Non-Aligned Countries.

C=How many windows are there on the building with these graffiti?

Stage 4

These coordinates should walk you down the famous “Small Stairs Street” below the Branko’s bridge. The wall of the stairs is filled with interesting works. At the beginning of the stairway, there is a mural of Robin Williams, made only some days after his death. However, preparation works for the reconstruction are currently underway, so I’m not sure how much of it will remain afterwards. While enjoying the view, calculate the final coordinates where cache is hidden.

D=How many bones the dog wants to catch?

Final coordinates will take you to the place with a great view of the famous mural La Santa de Belgrade.

Since 2008, Belef and the Platform for Contemporary Art in Belgrade Kiosk have brought big names of world street art to Belgrade. The idea is for them to leave their interpretation of the city on the façades. One of them is a French artist, Guillaume Alby, known as Remed, because he sees art as a remedy.

Since he had never been in Belgrade before, he first studied history of the city and the Serbian art. He particularly liked medieval frescoes and the icon of Mother of God of “the Three Hand”. So he decided to give Belgrade a patron saint whose multiple arms both destroy and protect the city, and he named the mural “La Santa de Belgrade”.
The mural is made in black and white, with only two golden objects added. Between Our Lady’s feet there is a golden egg cracked open, the symbol of life, from which the city culture is growing, while over her head there is a golden sun, which symbolises life.
In making this masterpiece Remed used the black acrylic and the highest quality white paint, so his angel will protect Belgrade for a long time.

I hope you will enjoy visiting this colorful part of Belgrade. 

Cache is small metal container.