CHILE: Streetart Valparaíso - Artist Special - EDUARDO MENA

Tribute to EDUARDO MENA – Rest in Peace – We Remember You

A self-taught painter, EDUARDO MENA, who lived from 1964 till 2021, was a prominent Chilean artist, especially renowned for capturing the essence, melancholy, and human and architectural landscape of Valparaíso, a city with which he had a deep and unbreakable bond. However, EDUARDO MENA was born and raised in Santiago. He entered university in Valparaíso to study architecture, but like many architects, he ultimately became a great artist. He settled permanently in the coastal city in 2001. His art, not just his graffiti, transports the elemental nature of his living surrounding. He also spent a period in Mexico, holding exhibitions of his creations and learning about the art of those latitudes.

EDUARDO MENA used to define himself as a painter who sought beauty in the everyday and who used painting “to save himself”. One time he said: “If my painting contributes in any aspect, it’s to slowing down time and it’s meant for the loss of the innocence in things. I say that I paint mainly to save myself, but actually it’s an excuse to harmonize my spirit with the universe”.

EDUARDO MENA’s relationship with graffiti and urban intervention marks a fascinating turning point in his career. Although formally he was an oil painter, the Valparaíso environment eventually overflowed his canvases. Starting in 2009, he decided to expand the artistic vision and began directly intervening on the walls and alleyways of Valparaíso. All the photos displayed here are from that period.

Although his style wasn’t that of tagging or flopping, his agile, graphic, and impasto strokes adapted very organically to the walls. In Valparaíso, his work´s engaged closely with the rise of local muralism and graffiti, integrating itself into the heritage and popular landscape of the hills of the town, the so-called cerros, without loosing that melancholic and expressionistic air that characterized his work. This month, so June 2026, marks the fifth anniversary of his departure of this world. We keep on remembering him through his fantastic creations and ideas.

GraffitiPreBicentenario – Chile – June 2026