Two large murals on adjacent buildings, both painted during Tirana’s MurAL Fest 2021. In the back is a boy reading, “Overseas Stories”. In the foreground is a large female face.
below: Close up picture of the woman’s face with red slashes. Many of his recent murals are portraits with slashes of colour, especially reds and blues.
below: “Overseas Stories” by Italian artist Mattia Campo Dall’Orto; a boy’s journey of imagination over blue seas as he reads a book.
All of the paintings in this blog post were seen in a lane in Durres Albania, in the “old town” part of the city near the Roman amphitheatre.
Faleminderit Shqiperi = Thank you Albania!
They were all painted in 2014 (8 years ago) so most of them are looking a little weathered.
Written beside the painting below: “Ass. Cult. Ecletica 1st Bienale di Durazzo 2014”.
With thanks to the Mulliri Vjeter coffee shop on Rruga Myslym Shyri in Tirana where I hung out trying to stay cool while editing photos for this post. June 2022
This girl is the central image in a mural in the coastal town of Durres Albania. Under her there is text which reads: “An uneducated society can be more catastrophic than a natural disaster”.
As I walked around Tirana I saw several examples of murals by Albanian artist Eljan Tanini. This blog post features three – a whole building covered by his shapes and colours, a tall vertical mural, and last, a wall with four panels.
below: All sides of the building are covered with whimsical playful shapes in Blloku.
below: Street scene on Rruga Myslym Shyri with the bottom part of Tanini mural showing. This mural was painted as part of MurAL Fest 2018.
below: Four panels in a concrete wall have abstract paintings by Tanini (one on the left, with a blue background, is not shown).
On the southeast corner of the intersection of Bajram Curri Blvd and Rruga Sulejman Delvina in Tirana there is an apartment complex that has been painted in bright coloured stripes.
The stripes change to shapes on the other side.
below: In the middle of the complex is a small structure with one wall painted as part of MurAL fest one year. The title is “Visual Diary” and it the work of Albanian artist Mariola Mocka.
below: Another side of the structure is this abstract painting by noreason.
And here, either the stripes fade away or else they have been partially repainted.
He was born Nicu N. Iorga in Romania on 17 Jan 1871. He was a prolific writer and cultural historian. His biography is long and it gets complicated when discussing his scholarly works and opinions so I will leave that for you to read on Wikipedia (or similar) if you are interested. I haven’t figured out why he is featured on a mural in Albania. He was murdered in 1940 by the Iron Guard, a Romanian militant revolutionary fascist movement and political party.
The text is written in Albanian (or Romanian, google translate had trouble with this) but the first few words translate as “When two quarrel, the third wins”
This mural was painted by Irlo Doidoi for MurAL Fest 2019.
A large mural by Pixel Pancho on one side of the street and a small mural preaching kindness on the other.
Playing with a mechanical toy while sitting in the lap of a larger machine (robot?)
Three murals in Vilnius
below: Einstein by ettoja (aka Artur Širin) titled “It’s Never too Late”. A tattooed Einstein has his bling and his backpack and looks ready to hit the road (now that Covid seems to be waning?).
On Kauno (just around the corner from Einstein) is this large mural. It is a collaboration between Polish artist SEPE (aka Michal Wrega) and Lithuanian artist CHAZME (aka Daniel Kalinskiego).
Walking slightly farther west brings you to another mural. The words in the umbrella say Už Saugią Lietuvą which is the name of a campaign to fight domestic violence, “For a Safe Lithuania”
Writing on the mural is: “Do vanos? Za islai? O gal seima? Isileisi mane.” which loosely translates to: Do you have? Toys? Or maybe the family? Let me out.
Eyes on the Streets 