An explosion of art splashes color on the walls of the Besòs fluvial park. The river that has ceased to be an open-air landfill to become the paradigm of renaturalization and the driving model of biodiversity, is affiliated with BesArt, an innovative cultural project that in just under a year of existence has consolidated Santa Coloma de Gramenet as an international capital of urban art, elevated to the level of artistically cosmopolitan cities like Berlin or Miami. “The Besòs River has transformed, only culture was missing” summed up the mayoress, Núria Parlon, last March 13, 2023.
Since the BesArt The River Museum project was announced, promoted by the Mediterranean Street Art association and the Reial Cercle Artístic of Barcelona, ??many of the best urban art artists in the country have opted to display their works on the walls of the river park. . A route, for the moment, of 900 meters that includes 41 works by creators of the stature of Aritz (Octavi Serra Arrizabalaga), who was the first to begin the process of creating the first BesArt work, to which others soon joined. renowned artists such as Sixe Paredes, Mina Hamada, Franco Fasoli or Francesc Punsola.
The aspiration of the promoters of BesArt is to “maintain a living museum” that is appreciated as the essence of urban art, as defined by David Hernández, president of Mediterranean Street Art, one of the founders, which can lead to a mixture that fuses “philanthropy with the cultural industry.”
The strengthening of the urban museum occurs through the generation of synergies with complementary activities, as happened with the World Peace Forum when the river museum created the Peace Wall, where hundreds of people left their mark. In this aspect, a key piece is the Reial Cercle Artístic of Barcelona, ??the historic Barcelona cultural institution with 140 years of experience in the artistic world. Its president, José Félix Bentz, describes it: “We have given urban artists the opportunity to exhibit at the Palau Pignatelli,” the entity’s headquarters. This is the case of Aritz himself “who had a spectacular reception” being, he acknowledges, “one of the most massive events.” And the Cercle establishes in the museum one of the lines of periodic collaborations, such as those it maintains with various visual arts festivals to “fuse classical art with current artists and contemporary art” for which it assures: “the Cercle “I couldn’t close the door to a project like BesArt.”
It would not be surprising if the artists who participate in the museum project in Besòs end up exhibiting one day in “the Reina Sofía or the Tate Modern in London” as the second artist to capture his work on a wall in Fluvial Park has already done. , Sixe Paredes, as pointed out by Albert Agustí, executive director of the project, who also highlights BesArt as a point of confluence between established artists and new painters who seek notoriety by presenting their projects to the organization. And the fact is that the Santa Coloma project consolidates its prestige in international forums, largely thanks to the peculiarity of combining collaborations with other social activities, such as teaching with the involvement of local groups, such as schoolchildren, who are opens to know the diminished urban art.
The artists themselves recognize that it is gratifying to paint on the walls of BesArt because of the interaction that is generated with the public, which they have never had before. The organizers exemplify this with an anecdote from Francesc Punsola, recently famous for revealing the authorship of a petroglyph that seemed Neolithic. They say that he “stuck on the title of his work” until a cyclist passed by him and shouted “Vanishing point, artist, vanishing point!”, so he ended up calling it ‘Punk de Fuga’, a work that defines it as “countercultural, which opens a dimensional portal to those excluded from society, an opening with escape.”
But a project of such magnitude requires collaborators and patrons, philanthropists who help consolidate the evolution of urban artists with a new creative and participatory model that makes it an international cultural reference. A space that combines another unusual aspect, such as that since its creation it has not been vandalized. “Not even a pen touch” they say.
