Eduardo Kobra via Matrix

Eduardo Kobra

VIA THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL
CREATIVE ECONOMY

inspired by
THE GRAPEVINE TELEGRAPH
of Pre-Civil War African-Americans

promulgated by
The Brazilian Ministry of Culture

fomented by
The Bahian Secretary of Culture

fomented by
The Palmares Foundation
for the promotion of Afro-Brazilian Culture

fomented by
The National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples

I CURATE

Network Node

Name: Eduardo Kobra
City/Place: São Paulo
Country: Brazil

CURATION

from this node by: Criador acima/Creator above

Life & Work

Bio: From the outskirts of São Paulo to the world. Born in 1975 in Jardim Martinica, a poor neighborhood in the south of São Paulo, the artist Eduardo Kobra has become one of the most recognized muralists today, with works on 5 continents

Since the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, he holds the record for the largest graffiti mural in the world - first with ‘Etnias’, painted to celebrate the event, with 2,500 square meters; mark surpassed by himself in 2017, with a work in honor of chocolate that occupies a wall of 5,742 square meters on the margins of the Castello Branco Highway, in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo.

One of his most famous works is ‘O Beijo’, performed in 2012 on the High Line in New York - erased four years later. It is a colorful reinterpretation of the image made by the American photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995) on August 13, 1945, when the people took to the streets to commemorate the end of World War II.

Kobra started drawing on walls in hiding, as a graffiti artist, even during his adolescence. The taste for spontaneous street art was already visible in the boy, who collected warnings for unauthorized interventions at school and was even arrested three times for environmental crime - precisely because of the irregular use of sprays on nearby walls.

In the 1990s, he worked making posters, painting toy scenarios and creating decorative images for events in what was the largest amusement park in Brazil. It was the first time that he, the son of a tapestry maker and a housewife, had made money from his images. The work was successful, so much so that it earned him invitations to work in other companies and with advertising agencies.

His urban art began to gain visibility in the following decade. In 2007, he appeared prominently in the media for the first time because of the Muro das Memórias project, in which he immersed himself in the universe of old photos from São Paulo and started to reproduce them in the streets in sepia tones or in black and white, presenting a graffiti style different from the one that spread around the city.

This project ended up becoming a brand, the embryo of much of what was to come next.

Kobra became an obstinate researcher of historical images and there were many times when such predilection, stamped on gigantic walls, ended up serving to rescue the importance of places and strengthen the sense of belonging of its inhabitants.

Self-taught, the muralist admits that he learned and developed his art by observing the work of artists he admires - from the mysterious exponent of street art Banksy, a British whose identity has never been revealed, to names like the American Eric Grohe (1944-), the also North American Keith Haring (1958-1990) and Mexican Diego Rivera (1886-1957).

The projects started to add up. At Greenpincel, Kobra demonstrates an eloquent concern for environmental causes. These panels, composed of an image and a protest phrase, are strong pamphlets for ecological causes. In this sense, its genuine themes range from fighting predatory fishing to vetoing the exploitation of animals in events such as rodeo. Global warming, water and air pollution and deforestation also appear on their murals.

In 2009, Kobra came across three-dimensional street art paintings. He decided that he could do them too. He dived into his studio, performed several tests and then put his art on the street. First on Avenida Paulista, the symbolic and financial heart of São Paulo. Then, at exhibitions around the world, from festivals in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to events in the United States.

His sensitivity to social ills resulted in the Augmented Reality project, in which he painted ten panels in ten days in 2015, always calling attention to an important issue - from a missing girl to a homeless man who writes poems, going through the story of a dancer of poor origin from the São Paulo periphery.

More recently, in an updated visit to the old images, Kobra created the series Recortes da História. Instead of starting from old photographs that portray the memory of a place, the artist turns to remarkable moments in the history of humanity. Thus, scenes like that of the American activist Martin Luther King (1929-1968) giving a speech against racism gain walls by the Brazilian artist's features.

In the Olhar a Paz project, Kobra portrays historical personalities who have fought against violence, for the dissemination of a culture of peace throughout the world. It is when Brazilian art endorses - and often echoes - messages of brotherhood and non-violence. He has stamped on walls Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929-1945), Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai (1997-) and German scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), between another examples.

The legacy of his past in hip-hop is revived in the most striking style of his art: hyper-realistic images, often based on photographs of personalities, such as the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012), the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí ( 1904-1989) and the Brazilian musician Chico Buarque (1944-), covered with strong and contrasting colors. These colors ended up becoming his main calling card around the world, the striking style of his work. And, to a greater or lesser degree, they started to appear in works from the most diverse phases of his career.

His first mural outside Brazil was in Lyon, France, in 2011. At the time, he had been invited to illustrate a wall in a neighborhood that was undergoing a process of revitalization - that is, he used his Muros da Memória approach to help with historical appreciation of the region. Since then, he has painted in countries such as Spain, Italy, Norway, England, Malawi, India, Japan, United Arab Emirates, in addition to several North American cities.

He lives in São Paulo, where his studio is also located.

Contact Information

Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +55 11 3791-4605

Media | Markets

▶ Instagram: kobrastreetart
▶ Website: http://www.eduardokobra.com
▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/EduardoKobra

Clips (more may be added)

0:12:32
Eduardo Kobra: Expressing His Feelings Through Art
By Eduardo Kobra

96 views

Eduardo Kobra Curated

What's Been Happening?

A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

Grafiteiro, Graffiti Artist
- June 6, 2022
A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

Arte Urbana, Urban Art
- June 6, 2022
A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

Ativista da Paz, Peace Activist
- June 6, 2022
A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

Brasil, Brazil
- June 6, 2022
A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

São Paulo
- June 6, 2022
A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

Arte da Rua, Street Art
- June 6, 2022
A category was added to Eduardo Kobra:

Muralista, Muralist
- June 6, 2022
A video was posted re Eduardo Kobra:

Eduardo Kobra: Expressing His Feelings Through Art
Brazilian artist Carlos Eduardo Fernandes, AKA Kobra, is one of the most recognized muralists in the world. His works are featured in over 17 countries.
- June 6, 2022
Eduardo Kobra is matrixed!
- June 6, 2022

English (Portuguese →)

Pathways from Brazil

THROUGH THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY

(humanity has never had this before)

"I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
✅—Susan Rogers
Personal recording engineer: Prince, Paisley Park
Director: Music Perception & Cognition Laboratory, Berklee College of Music
Author: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You

The matrix was created in Salvador's Centro Histórico, where Bule Bule below, among magisterial colleagues for whom this matrix was originally built, sings "Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor... The time has come for these bronzed people to show their worth..."

Because in common with most cultures around our planet, the preponderance of Brazil's vast cultural treasure has been impossible to find from outside of circumscribed regions, including Brazil itself...

Music & lyrics (Brasil Pandeiro) by Assis Valente of Santo Amaro, Bahia, Brazil. Video by Betão Aguiar of Salvador.

Thus something new under the tropical sun: A means by which those above, those below, and EVERYBODY ELSE in the creative economy can be divulged EVERYWHERE.

Quincy Jones can curate Gilberto Gil, for example. And Gil can curate, writers, dancers, filmmakers, painters, record producers, set designers...and Luê Soares behind the mic above. You get to Quincy, you can get to Luê.

And by the mathematics of the small world phenomenon, everybody in the matrix will tend to proximity to everybody else, in the same way that most human beings are within some six or so steps of most others.

The difference being that in the matrix, these steps are along pathways that can be travelled. The creative world becomes a neighborhood. Quincy Jones is right up the street and Branford Marsalis around the corner. And the most far-flung genius you've never heard of is just a few doors down. Maybe even in Brazil. Laroyê!

"Matrixado!"

✅—Founding Member Darius Mans
Economist, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
✅—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President of Brazil

The matrix is the ultimate evolution of a pathway which began in New York City decades ago per the "rescue" of unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd of Kingston's Studio One (Bob Marley's producer), and others. A long and winding road that led to necessity of a truly open arts universe, for there is more in Heaven and Earth...

"Many thanks for this - I am touched!"
✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
That most fabled cellist in the United Kingdom (and Brazilian music fan)

"I'm truly thankful... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini
Blue Note recording artist)

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals
Founder of The Klezmatics

"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad
Compositions recorded by Yo Yo Ma and played by orchestras around the world

"Thank you"
(Banch Abegaze, manager)
✅—Kamasi Washington

Tap people, tap categories, tap curations... The matrix is a maze of tunnels within King Solomon's creative mines.

(← Inglês) Português

Caminhos do Brasil

ATRAVÉS DA ECONOMIA CRIATIVA GLOBAL INTEGRADA

(a humanidade nunca teve isso antes)

"Fico muitíssimo feliz em receber seu e-mail! Obrigada por me incluir neste matrix maravilhoso."
✅—Susan Rogers
Engenheiro de gravação pessoal para Prince: Paisley Park
Diretora: Laboratório de Percepção e Cognição Musical, Berklee College of Music
Autora: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You

O matrix foi criado no Centro Histórico de Salvador, onde Bule Bule abaixo, entre colegas magisteriais para quem este matrix foi originalmente construído, canta "Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor..."

Pois em comum com a maioria das culturas ao redor do nosso planeta, a preponderância do vasto tesouro cultural do Brasil tem sido impossível de encontrar de fora de regiões circunscritas, incluido o próprio Brasil...

Música & letras (Brasil Pandeiro) por Assis Valente de Santo Amaro, Bahia. Vídeo por Betão Aguiar de Salvador.

Assim algo novo sob o sol tropical: Um meio pelo qual os acima, os abaixo e TODOS OS OUTROS na economia criativa podem ser divulgados em TODOS OS LUGARES.

Quincy Jones pode indicar Gilberto Gil, por exemplo. Gil pode indicar escritores, dançarinos, cineastas, pintores, produtores de discos...e Luê Soares atrás do microfone acima. Você chega em Quincy, pode chegar em Luê.

E pela matemática do fenômeno de mundo pequeno, todos no matrix tenderão a se aproximar de todos, da mesma forma que a maioria dos seres humanos estão dentro de cerca de seis passos da maioria dos outros.

Com a diferença que no matrix, estes passos estão ao longo de caminhos que podem ser percorridos. O mundo criativo se torna uma vizinhança. Quincy Jones está lá em cima e Branford Marsalis está ao virar da esquina. E o gênio distante que você nunca ouviu falar tá lá embaixo. Talvez até no Brasil. Laroyê!

"Matrixado!"

✅—Membro Fundador Darius Mans
Economista, doutorado, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
✅—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Presidente do Brasil

O matrix é a evolução definitiva de um caminho que começou em Nova York há décadas atrás pelo "resgate" dos direitos autorais não pagos para Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd do Studio One de Kingston (o produtor de Bob Marley), e outros. Um longo e sinuoso caminho que levou à necessidade de um universo de artes verdadeiramente abertom pois há mais no Céu e na Terra...

"Muito obrigado por isso - estou tocado!"
✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
Estamos tocados também Sr. Webber!
Merecidamente o violoncelista mais lendário do Reino Unido (e fã da música brasileira)

"Estou realmente agradecido... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini
Artista da Blue Note)

"Obrigada, esta é uma ideia brilhante!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals
Fundadora do The Klezmatics

"Este é um trabalho super impressionante! Parabéns! Obrigada por me incluir :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad
Composições gravadas por Yo Yo Ma e tocadas por orquestras ao redor do mundo

"Thank you"
(Banch Abegaze, empresário)
✅—Kamasi Washington

Toque em pessoas, toque em categorias, toque em curadoria... O matrix é um labirinto de túneis dentro das minas criativas do Rei Salomão.