(Credit: http://news.rambler.ru/20480845)

In the mid-1990s when the paint and tip-caps were hard to get, the first Moscow graffiti artists used shoe polish and filled the markers with brilliant green. Now Moscow has several operating graffiti stores selling aerosol cans of hundreds of colors and shades. Each year the capital hosts large-scale graffiti festivals covering both the town centre and the remote residential areas.

After the Moscow Energy Company gave two thousand freestanding technical buildings to the artists, heat stations and transformer substations were painted in each yard of the capital. A usual walk in Moscow can be turned into a fascinating cultural quest with the search for the most interesting works of street avant-garde. It should be started from Tsvetnoy Boulevard where a large-scale work with social meaning appeared last year.

The artist Aleksey Mednyi depicted a tiger, a bear, an elephant and a monkey on the firewall with the area of 200 square meters and made a timely inscription: “For circus without animals”. Turning from Sadovo-Triumfalnaya Street to Vorotnikovsky Lane you get into the oldest quarter of Moscow‘s graffiti: the works of iconic graffiti teams ”ZACHEM”, “310”,  “CHO” can be seen in the openings and arches.

Many interesting art objects are scattered in the territory of “Vinzavod”, Artplay Centre and the design factory “Flacon”. The urban landscape of Losinoostrovsky Rayon at the junction of Izumrudnaya and Yantarnaya Streets is decorated by the best graffiti artists from Russia, Netherlands, Iceland, Brazil, USA. The Kiev artists from Interesni Kazki team created a monumental work “The Time Machine” on Sadovnicheskaya Street, between the Moscow River and Vodootvodny canal. The pattern on the house facade made by the Italian Agostino Iacurci is clearly visible from Krasnokholmsky Bridge.

The Argentine author working under the pseudonym Gualicho painted a composition in Bolshoy Sukharevsky Lane where every passer-by finds something for himself: one sees a bell, another – a jellyfish, the third one - a flying saucer. The Portuguese Alejandro Farto carved a portrait of the German writer Hermann Hesse on Savvinskaya embankment with drill, chisel and hammer. The Museum of Modern Art on Gogol Boulevard hosts the exhibition of the iconic artist Pavel Petukhov (under the pseudonym Pasha 183) who died in 2013, until May 25.

Thanks to his recognizable stenciled style and the use of optical techniques, the brevity of plots and romance of characters, Pasha 183 gained recognition in Russia and abroad. He was called “Russian Banksy”, although Pasha himself did not like this label - he did not consider his art works to be analogous to the ones of the British master.