UPAINT Monaco 2024 returns from June 7th to 10th once again on the Larvotto Beachwalk. The 8th edition of your favorite monégasque street art festival will support not one, but two organizations: the FPA2 and the SPA. The goal is to raise funds to help finance the SPA's new refuge for abandoned and homeless animals. With the help of 12 exceptional international Artists, UPAINT Monaco brings you 4 days of Creativity, Passion, and Fun!
The link to register for the Auction in partnership with Hôtel des Ventes Monte-Carlo, on June 10th at 6.30pm will be available soon, and you will be able to see the Catalog of the artworks' lots.
Discover UPAINT 2024 Artists and their stories below...
Discover the Artists
Alex is an animal painter from the Quebec region of Canada.
Her colorful works combine abstract and figurative. She began painting self-taught in 2016. She also explored various artistic techniques during her studies in presentation design and graphic design.
In 2018, she challenged herself to create a work without using brushes, looking around for everyday objects to stamp. This experience had a profound effect on her career, and she has continued to incorporate objects into her work, making this approach her artistic signature. Sharing her creative process through videos, Alex is very active on social networks, where her works captivate audiences both in Quebec and internationally.
Follow her here: @alex_artiste_peintre
Andrea Cocciolo, in art ''TOSH'', born in Santa Margherita (GE) in 1995, obtains the diploma of Master of Art in 2012 at the artistic high school ''E.Luzzati'' in Chiavari (GE), where he still lives.
From the very first steps he emerges on the Ligurian painting scene, proposing an art reminiscent of the ''pop art'' American movement of the 50s/60s, corroborated by the completely personal taste that fully expresses his artistic self.
The reference to the ''pop'' movement is far from coincidental, since one of the earliest works signed by TOSH is what could be described as a ''cover'' of ''Toan Crawford Says'', a work by the famous American painter James Rosenquist.
A fair balance of resourcefulness, stubbornness and talent lead him to a continuous presence in group and solo exhibitions, fairs and live performances throughout Italy. Noteworthy are the commissions received from Patron Tequila and Ernst Knam. During his young but intense career Tosh already boasts publications in the national press, including, the ''SECOLO XIX'', ''LA STAMPA'' and ''Grazia'' on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the birth of ''Mickey Mouse''.
Each canvas is the result of long reflections interspersed with moments of pure creative instinct, which include the use of a variety of artistic techniques: starting from the autonomous realization of the support, the application of oil and acrylic paints to the application of enamel and pastel strokes.
TOSH's art has no half-measures, the message is direct and easily assimilated for the mind of the 'observer who remains enraptured by the assonance between bright colors and images that accumulate the life of each of us and that have been part of the lives of people of two or three generations: he himself defines it with the term ''new pop”.
Follow him here: @andrewtoshpainter
In the mid-90s, he imposed a unique, evolving logo on the streets of Paris: Chanoir.
The CHA come to life on the walls and communicate their feelings to passers-by. Instinctive, naive and always positive.
He's constantly redefining the boundaries between graffiti, street art, logotypes and tags.
He joined the Paris Beaux Arts School, graduating in 2002 with Jean-Michel Alberola. He then rubbed shoulders with the painters of the figuration libre movement, from whom he built a bridge with post-graffiti.
His totemic paintings nevertheless evoke the mystical power of the primitive arts.
He added performance, installation, photography, collections and video art to his means of expression, and became part of the modest art movement.
His work draws on his childhood memories and uses the power of disguise to constantly metamorphose.
A nomadic artist, he became extremely active on the walls of Barcelona, producing the documentary "Murs Libres" (Free Walls) about the best years of Barcelona graffiti. He then founded the 1980 collective.
In 2003, he took over the Colombian art scene with numerous exhibitions in galleries and at Bogotá's Museum of Modern Art. He popularized graffiti as it is practiced in Europe.
His international career took him from Miami to Los Angeles, from Beijing to Costa Rica, via Rome, London and Brussels.
He presented a poetic interactive graffiti installation (tagging the moon) and several frescoes for the "né dans la rue" exhibition at the Fondation Cartier.
Working with major brands, he enjoys becoming everything, covering everything, dressing everything.
Follow him here: @chanoir1980
Cofee, a self-taught artist, takes his name from his first canvases, which he painted using coffee.
Through encounters with various graffiti artists, including Rino and Esor, Cofee gradually found his own style, combining techniques acquired through his creations.
It's in the "calligraffiti" movement that his work finds its essence.
Rather than using the basics of calligraphy to form letters, Cofee reworks them to create portraits, animals or an abstract variation. A way of writing images.
A technique honed through multiple creations on canvas, but also on walls, which are the artist's preferred medium. Daily studio work, however, enables him to perfect his techniques before applying them on a large scale. Walls are getting bigger and bigger: witness is the tower at the Moûtiers belvedere, which he created with his partner Rino.
An avid hip-hop fan, Cofee brings his vision of this world to life in his graphics. In this context, he regularly takes to the stage with the company "Supreme Legacy" to combine dance and painting.
An enthusiast of teamwork and challenges, he and Rino painted an entire 10,000 square meter wasteland building in Auvergne, before moving on to other large-scale projects.
For several years now, Cofee has been exhibiting regularly at major contemporary art fairs with L'Arbre de Jade gallery and is gradually making a name for himself among collectors.
Follow him here: @cofee_tsk
Barcelona, 1969
He studied graphic design and advertising and began painting on the street with a marker in 1985 and with aerosol in 1987. After filling up Barcelona, Catalonia, and the rest of Spain with his art, he began traveling to Europe and America and decorating their streets with his Logo-Art.
Xupet has collaborated with the fashion, skate, and sneaker world along with art marker brands and Street Art representative firms. His work has and continues to be exhibited insome of the most important galleries in the art scene worldwide including Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, San José (Costa Rica), Los Angeles & Miami among others.
Recently, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, he opened his own studio gallery in downtown Barcelona so he could be part of the urban art tours and to have direct contact with the community.
He is the precursor of the Logo-Art and one of its most relevant figures, actively working in the graffiti scene from its beginning and a key stone of the street-art movement. He is influenced by Pop Art, the graffiti of the urban authors, the advertising and graphic design culture, the street signal language and the history of art.
The message is capital in his work, using social values such as peace, respect, diversity, equality, amongst others. To him, the purpose is to color walls and people minds.
Follow him here: @elxupetnegre
Inspired by his late father, who was an amateur painter, Harry James took an early interest in drawing. In the Paris suburbs, he produced his first murals with spray cans and also practiced human beat box to accompany his rapper friend, later to become famous as MC Solaar.
However, reality caught up with him and he submitted his portfolio as a graffiti artist. He was then hired as a decorator at Disneyland Paris before the park opened to the public. His work was so remarkable that Walt Disney Imagineering entrusted him with the renovation of the castle's paintings to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Disneyland Paris.
At the same time, Harry James has continued to evolve within urban cultures and has now opted for acrylic painting. In 2012, he won the "Art Battles" in the heart of Paris, a live painting competition featuring a selection of France's best street artists.
Fascinated by the animal kingdom and challenged by man's place in the ecosystem, Harry James creates therianthropic characters where human and animal anatomy mingle in a style that is both urban and distinguished.
Follow him here: @harryjamesparis
Juanjo Surace was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1977 and began his artistic activity as a self-taught artist in 1995. In 1998, he emigrated to Barcelona where he soon began working as a 3D animator, 2D animator and illustrator in several TV series, films, video games and projections for theatrical productions.
In 2009, he produced, directed and animated the short film "La confesión de Saduj", which was officially selected in 62 film festivals around the world and won five awards.
In 2013 he presented his solo show "Esa extraña compañia" at Fousion Gallery in Barcelona. In the coming years he exhibited his work as a sculptor and painter in galleries and art fairs in Spain, France, Argentina, USA and Germany.
From 2014 to 2022, he taught traditional animation, 3D modeling, stop motion and character design at the Escuela Superior de Cine de Cataluña (ESCAC) and Sculpture at Pompeu Fabra University.
In 2017, he began his activity as a muralist, intervening in public spaces, an activity that continues to this day.
Currently his murals can be seen in Spain, Argentina, Italy, United States, Portugal, Romania and France.
Follow him here: @juanjosurace
Mathieu_1976 painted his first wall in 1994 in San Francisco, at the age of 18, on a wall of the high school where he was taking his baccalaureate, with ZORK 531 (he had already been tagging periodically in the streets of Paris since 1992).
Upon his return to France, he painted in disused factories for days on end...
Mathieu_1976 studied science at the University of Paris 6, but was drawn to spray paint as his only medium. He left university and became a full-time graffiti artist in 2004.
Mathieu_1976's approach is to mix "poetry and absurdity" through a figurative confrontation between humanity (recurrently represented by consumer objects) and the natural environment (generally an animal symbol).
Cultivating the principle of ephemeral work, the artist frequently covers his work with another, while leaving snippets of the previous one to appear, sometimes dozens of times.
Symbolizing each being and each thing inexorably pushed outwards, Mathieu_1976's paintings oscillate between allegory of the ephemeral and representation of the "perpetual"...
Follow him here: @mathieu_1976
Mr. OneTeas started graffiti in 2005. Self-taught, he develops his style through travels, meetings and exchanges, leaving his mark on the streets of major international cities. His work focuses on planned obsolescence by giving another life to materials and consumer objects of the past while illustrating the evils of our society. He draws his inspiration from the media, political and cultural environments. By diverting images and the news, he offers us his critical vision of society, marked by humour and originality.
In 2019, he produced his first museum retrospective at the Galerie Lympia, a former prison in Nice, with the exhibition “Reality Show 2.0” dealing with various ills of current society, by putting the viewer face to face with many excesses of our reality.
Follow him here: @mroneteas
Nina Valkhoff (1982) is a muralist and painter from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who focuses on flora and fauna. She has been working as a professional muralist for over 20 years with works in Sweden, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Argentina, Portugal, Mexico, France, Curaçao, Germany and Ireland.
Nina studied illustration at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy in Rotterdam. Her work can be seen worldwide on streets, apartment buildings, restaurants, offices, and shops.
Making big mural paintings is her passion. She loves to cover her walls with plants and animals. With her murals she wants to bring attention to endangered species or highlight local animals who often remain unnoticed. She likes to call this ‘subtle activism’: by making people notice her animals, she hopes to inspire people to treat animals better. She hopes to make people aware of their existence, to show the beauty of these animals, and to point out our selective love for cute or more common animals. Her botanical compositions are dynamic and playful, always with a hint of magic.
Follow her here: @ninapelirroja
Francesco Persichella, aka Piskv, is an architect and street artist based in Rome, born in 1993. In 2023 he was included in the list of 100under30 drawn up by Forbes IT, in the Art & Style category.
Always interested in architecture and art, he tried to find a synthesis through street art which allows him to interact with the architectural context, enhancing it through beauty of representation. His aesthetic ranges from a realist style to a geometric futurist-cubist one, all united by a purely figurative attitude. Great attention is paid to the use of color and how it interacts with space to create angular but engaging shapes that tell of a fast, dynamic, frenetic world.
His artistic career has developed in the capital, starting in 2011, and to date he has created more than 50 urban art interventions around Italy. Among these, the tribute to basketball legend KOBE BRYANT achieved notable international prominence in 2020, which was the driving force for numerous other sports-related projects that lend themselves well to his dynamic language, including:
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a mural on the surface of the Scalo San Lorenzo playground, the first basketball court painted
in Rome and one of the largest in Italy, created for RED BULL in 2021.
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again, with RED BULL, in 2022, a mural on the surface of the Ostia skatepark, one of the largest in Europe, for a surface area of over 1500 sqm.
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the same year he was selected by NBA as the only Italian artist to celebrate the 75 years of the American league. From this collaboration was born a 100 sqm mural created in Rome and then exhibited during the NBA ABU DHABI GAMES 2022.
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In 2023 he created a skate themed mural for the WORLD SKATE TOUR which stopped in Rome and 3 murals for the ITALIAN TAEKWONDO FEDERATION
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In 2022 at the Valmontone Outlet he created the LONGEST SUSTAINABLE MURALES IN ITALY, over 110 m painted with the special AIRLITE smog-catching paints.
Follow him here: @mr_piskv
Sven is an artist from Mulhouse born in 1988. He is a member of the Schlager Club. He discovered graffiti during his travels and, fascinated by the mix of styles and colors, decided to start painting in the street, in warehouses and on all kinds of surfaces.
A few years later, he decided to transcribe these supports, with their irregularities and highlights, onto canvas.
Sven then superimposes materials in the manner of a visual artist, these different layers enabling Sven's works to be singular and instantly recognizable.
Sven's canvases are also characterized by his lettering, bright colors and sometimes spectacular formats. Thanks to his work, Sven has exhibited in various parts of the world: New York, Miami, Paris, Beirut, St-Tropez, Cannes, Lausanne, Strasbourg, Toulouse...
He has worked alongside such great artists as Banksy, Mr Brainwash, Jorone... Today, he is continuing his work of research and materials, as well as highlighting the irregularities that can be found on the street with Graffiti, where time has left its mark...
Follow him here: @svengraffiti
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