Issue #91

Urban Art: heritage or reinvention

Edito #90 | October – November 2026

Visible, recognised, and legitimate, Urban Art is doomed to answer the same question repeatedly: What remains of its original spirit? A vast debate: Is the established outsider still a disruptive challenger?
To catch a glimpse of the beginnings of an answer, let’s explore the fruitful tension between heritage and reinvention that runs through the urban scene – from the alleyways of Florence to the murals of Mons, from the fantastical chimeras of Codex Urbanus to the pixelated constructions of Qargo, from the contemporary azulejos of Berri Blue to the sleek silhouettes of Jérôme Masi, not to mention Crazé’s
vibrant ‘cocktails’ made with a mix of graffiti, hip-hop, and pop culture.
While Urban Art has conquered museums, art centres, biennials, and major international art fairs, it continues to flourish in the interstices of our society – a society torn between technology, transformation, and progress, but also social and environmental tensions. It is in these margins that the experiments emerge through which artists and dreamers break free from established rules and conventions.
Let’s take a closer look at Lowbrow art and Pop Surrealism, long viewed with suspicion by institutions.
These movements, born of counterculture, have developed a visual language capable of creating a dialogue between comics, popular culture, fantasy, illustration, graffiti, and academic painting. This fusion resonates with the very history of Urban Art.
In a world saturated with images, where algorithms often favour repetition, the ability to produce unique forms has undoubtedly become one of the major challenges of contemporary creation. In this regard,
Urban Art possesses a considerable advantage. It is deeply rooted, in the city, in encounters, and in the unexpected elements that still elude standardisation.
Urban Art retains this ability to constantly question the world’s evolution and to subvert it.

Urban Art: the never-ending day of Art.