The fantastic painter and muralist ARTEZ creates huge artworks at lofty heights in Belgrade and around the whole world. His motifs often show people in everyday situations including creative abstractions that blend vibrant imagery with narrative depth. Instead of a head, a figure is sometimes given a watering can or a bush. The works transform boring, dull facades into pleasant glimpses of a neighborhood living room. With over 20 years of experience, he has completed hundreds of public artworks across Europe, Asia, and South America.
We met with the versatile artist in Belgrade and he showed us some of his great works. Afterwards, we recorded an interview in Karađorđev park. He told us about his development as an artist, his special painting technique and the countless urban art festivals in which he has already participated. He has been nicknamed „Epson“ by other artists because he uses a crane to paint his murals in a similar way to a printer.
You can find the audio below if you want to listen. If you prefer to read, the written interview follows. In between are countless photos of some of ARTEZ’s awesome works. A big thank you also goes to photographer and streetart hunter BORIS VATOVEC, who provided us with breathtaking photos of his drone from the air. Take a look and enjoy!
Hello listeners, here we have a great interview for you again from the city of Belgrade. I’m going to speak now to the fantastic artist, or let’s say muralist ARTEZ. He makes huge wall paintings and artworks on skyscrapers. Actually he just came back from Denmark from a cool mural project. We’re sitting now in a park in Belgrade and he will tell us a little bit about his art, his development and how he creates artworks.
Hello everyone! Basically I’m based in Belgrade and I get to travel quite a lot, especially in the last few years. Mostly for painting large scale walls. And I’m really enjoying this lifestyle, although it’s a bit challenging from time to time. Because of the normal life I also try to have.
Just before we passed this one popular big mural with the woman holding the flowers, which is called „Thirst for Nature„. During the last days I photographed really a lot of murals from you, also several artworks in Novi Sad. Most of them are really big, but you also had smaller ones. Of course you didn’t start with that huge size, so to tell us a little bit how you began. How did you start getting involved with arts? Later on you also studied architecture?
When I was in elementary school I started noticing tags when I was 12 years old. More or less. But around that time I started noticing tags and graffiti. Those were quite present on Belgrade streets and that really fascinated me. So in the elementary school I also started tagging by the end of these days. Finally I did my first graffiti with spray cans. And for the first 12 years of my painting career, I was painting mostly with cans. I did various letters and styles and I was experimenting with a lot of methods. And then I started slowly shifting towards characters. As I was shifting towards characters, the scale was changing. Over time I started painting bigger and bigger. One bigger wall here, one bigger wall there. Here I am around 20 years later and now I’m mostly painting on very big walls. Really big walls. The small wall would be just around 50 to 70 square meters, so it’s usually much bigger than that. Yes, like skyscrapers. That’s what I like the most. It sound strange, but meanwhile I don’t use spray cans anymore for more than 10 years now. I completely shifted to rollers and brushes. It is just easier, better and more practical for that high altitude creations.
I also think about that in this size it would take ages if you do it only with small spray cans. And maybe there are also some kind of effects which you cannot do the way how you want it.
Well, yeah, it really depends on the technique, because some people adapt the technique to the scale. So you would see many artists who still paint very big walls with cans. And for me, it was more about control of the color palette. It’s that with cans, no matter how many tones you can get from a palette, like from different brands, you still miss some tones. And it was really annoying me at some point because, for example, some tones of beige I couldn’t find. You buy all the different cans you can find on the market and then this one tone of beige just doesn’t exist. So that was a really big relief for me when I started mixing the Trilix from the bass tones. I could really control the final output. It was a really big step even though I didn’t know it at that time, but it was a really big step for for me to develop as an artist.
That way you could also mix your own tone by mixing the colors together and you could get exactly the color you wanted.
And it gives you power, because you control the whole process. There’s no excuse like, oh, I didn’t have this color. No, man, you have all the colors you can imagine. It just depends on how stubborn you are to actually find the right tone if you didn’t find it in the first attempt.
So you said at the beginning you were excited about the tags, then you also did some lettering but then more characters and this was part of your development. I would describe your style like kind of photorealistic portrays but also with an abstract touch. It reminds me sometimes on paintings which you can find in a museum, there are sometimes even parts which remind on Dalí in some way. Yesterday in Novi Sad I saw this mural with the guy watering some flowers, but instead of his head he had a watering can. The motifs are a lot of time people, but you make some abstraction in it and it’s not like comic style, it’s more like a portrayal photo.
Yes, it’s a realistic style and in that direction. Well I think that depending on the time of the moment I was changing my style and what I would paint more or less. So I had this phase where I was focusing on characters that have something instead of their head. The idea was to cut out the identity, because if you paint a face then you give the figure the identity. Well, like this they just became non-defined persons. Like you can call them person and it opened a very nice space for storytelling. So I really enjoyed this series and I worked on it for a couple of years, then I went back to other ideas. What can be very characteristic about my work is that I’m a figurative painter. You will rarely see me doinng an abstract painting, even though some parts of the artworks have some elements that might be abstract or more like surrealistic. And that’s when it comes to topic. Before I was more surrealist than today. Today I’m focusing more on some other things. I guess it’s the part of evolving as an artist. And the one in Novi Sad, it was a very nice series and I painted quite a lot of different pieces from this series all around the world and It’s something that over years I forgot, but then this year I remembered again that it’s really important that artists makes series of works. Not only the one piece and then you jump to another idea, but without really developing the previous idea. I think it’s very important to stick to one concept and to try to adapt it to different locations and different purposes.
So you really go into it, develope it more and kind of unfold the idea.
Yeah, exactly. Like to get the most out of one thing that you came up with. And that is, if you have a good idea, then not to just jump from one to the other. Because if you keep jumping, then you never actually really dig into this one thing. And it’s a shame because sometimes some good ideas, they just stop. I remember a story of a Swiss guy. I don’t remember the name exactly. But he was the artist who was supposedly the first one who painted the human dissection on a wall as a graffiti. And then the big beef came when NYCHOS from Austria started doing dissection, because this guy was acutally the first one who did it. But then again, you had NYCHOS who did it like many times and over and over again, and he really developed the idea. So I don’t want to get into this like if NYCHOS saw the idea from this guy or not. It doesn’t really matter in the end. But what’s important is that NYCHOS saw the potential in this idea and he really gave it a push and made a really big career. His career exploded after these actions. And it’s a very good example of someone who really kept developing one storyline or one approach and then did their crazy things with it
When i think about your artworks or the ones I’ve seen, there were these surrealistic parts but also average people. For example the ones at the bridge and around it, they are a bit older ones, but with those it looked also like a present for the neighborhood. The bridge before was very ugly gray and then you put on painting like a living room where some girl was half sleeping reading in a book, next to there there is a woman who’s giving water to flowers. So you changed this before ugly surface bridge into part of like a living space, so that people who live there get more feeling of their surrounding that it’s a enjoyable and really relaxed area. When I was taking the photos and walked past, I thought it’s another living room and I actually would like to sit on the painted sofa because it looks really cozy.
Well the thing is that when you paint in public space you’re never the only one who is involved in the decision making and very often the people who organize or clients who permission the work are also involved in the decision making of what is going to be painted. So i think for that particular wall it was a commission and the client was giving a little bit of directions because they were trying to revitalize this area. They were building a lot of housing projects and they’re still building this Belgrade Waterfront area, so they wanted to really turn some unattractive spots into something that people will recognize as a piece of art. These artworks were a little bit adapted to this idea that they are working for the neighborhood which is going to be built there. So you got the right feeling. It was actually for the neighbors. It’s just that at the moment when I was painting, there was still no buildings yet. There was nothing at all. It was just the bridge. One thought that I keep repeating, I heard it from friend Višan Rajc, who is a very famous Serbian contemporary artist and street artist. He said that the artworks belong to us only while we paint them, and then when we leave they don’t belong to us anymore, they belong to the society and to people who live around the place. So I always try to keep that in mind and I always hope that the pieces that I make will be there for the people. And that the people will be happy with them because otherwise it would be selfish of me to just paint for myself and not to think about the others.
You said when you do commission works others have a say in it. So I think all the big scale artworks are some sort of commission works because you have to get a permission or agreement and you need a lot of time to paint the mural. So how free can you be with with your ideas and how far are you willing to do compromises?
That’s a really good question and I think that it really depends on the project and the society, but mostly it depends on the way how the people from certain societies see art. Because in some places even if the walls are big and permissions are hard to get and funding is bigger than in some other places, and funding needed to execute the project, but you would still have more artistic freedom than in places where unfortunately people who don’t know much about art want to be involved in decision making. Over the years I developed a few mechanisms to deal with the different situations and I learned to recognize if the project goes in the wrong direction. Usually you know if it goes in the less artistic and more commissioned area. And usually money is the tool that helps to make the balance because the less freedom you give me, the more money I will ask for. And then very often the projects don’t happen because I’m not going to compromise. If you want me to paint some random stuff that don’t have to do anything with what I usually paint, then you have to pay. And yeah, it’s funny how money can help you get away from some bad projects. I had a funny moment with a lady on one of the previous walls. She stopped and she was like, this is so beautiful what you paint, like the mural. But do you also paint like interior of flats? I was like, sure, I do it. It’s just that the price is like as the price for painting. So I don’t think it will be in your budget. Like you don’t want to pay like many thousands of Euros for a job that somebody can do for 1000 or 2000. And I would ask you like eight or 10,000 and it’s not gonna happen if you just want your walls painted in white. So yeah.
Did it also happen that maybe you finished an artwork and later on it got some arguments or some people didn’t like it or something like this and you needed to change things?
Things like this also happened sometimes, yeah well, sometimes it happened but that was when I was younger. I made this mistake of painting without a sketch that we agreed on, but just like on some sketch that is not a hundred percent defined. And then of course if it’s not 100% defined then they can ask for changes and we don’t have leverage to say no. But now I learned the lesson and what we agreed before I started painting is what you get. Otherwise you have to pay some extra fee or something. Really most of the time everything is alright. But altogether it also depends on the projects. This year I was on quite a few projects where they didn’t even ask me for the sketch. And the curation was really good. Like the organization and the guys who did the projects knew what the artist wants. And they knew how to communicate to the building owners, to the authorities and everyone. And in the end, I ended up painting some really nice walls that are usually better than the ones that are commissioned. And the feedback that I got from the audience was like crazy good. And it’s mostly because of this level of freedom that was involved. With many of my other commissions, so usually what happens is that people organize projects and in many cases, it’s the first project for them or second project. And they think they have, especially if it’s second or third project, they think they have some experience. And they think they can involve in the decision making when it comes to the artwork. But the fact is that for me, it’s like project number 650. And man, that’s like 200 times more than what you’ve done, so you have to trust the artist in the end of the day. The good curation means that you picked the right artist for the job and that you pick the person that you have trust and that you can give him the the freedom to do what he does best. So without good curation everyone suffers.
Like you said, you have done hundreds of artworks all around the world and even before I came to Belgrade I knew some of your works, we also have a mural from Albania on the website. Tell us about how it developed with expanding your area because first you’ve done your stuff in Belgrade and in Serbia but now you’re traveling to numerous countries for making murals.
Yeah, I think there are two things combined. One is the love for traveling and combined with hard work. I believe that nothing comes without hard work if you want to make an honest living. If you don’t want to go into crime or something, you have to work hard and you have to be consistent. Not to make breaks, not to use the excuses because many people will say like, I don’t know what to paint or I’m not inspired. Yeah, man, that’s normal. I’m not inspired most of the time. But still, you have to find a way how to make a painting. To overcoming these small obstacles is the most important thing. If you want to be consistent in painting and publishing, and then if you’re consistent, if you’re publishing regularly, every week. every two weeks, every day or whatever, then results will come. And because in the end it’s important that people remember you and that you’re the one that they will invite, like when they plan to make a project or something, that you will be one of the first names that comes to mind when they want to invite someone. And yeah, for this you have to be consistent and publish regularly where it helps. And I think for me, it was that I started with some series of rooster that I was painting. Whenever I didn’t know what to paint, I would paint like the same motif. It’s like with graffiti, because with graffiti, you pick the certain combination of letters, and then you repeat that over and over again. While I was doing that with characters, I came up with my own character. I guess the examples for me were LUNAR from Zagreb or FLYING FÖRTRESS or other artists like that. So i came up with my own character and I just kept repeating this same motive over and over again. Whenever I didn’t know what to paint, I painted that. Later on I started changing but repetition plus hard work plus love for travel equals you go around the world painting, yeah.
Tell us about some countries where you’ve been and where you left artworks around the world.
I’ve spent a lot of time in India. That was really almost a year. I went there nine times so far. It was actually the place where I made a decision that I wanted to make a living from painting. I finished my studies of architecture after that, but for the last year I knew that I’m not going to be an architect, but I’m going to be a street artist. And when it comes to different countries, I think after a while you get used to the urban landscape. So I don’t get excited about the buildings or architecture anymore. But what really makes an impression are the people and the nature. So these are two things that I always try to find wherever I go. I try to find some nice people and uh if possible to spend some time in nature because that’s something that really makes a big difference for me.
Above Left: „My presents are wrapped“, Hyderabad, India, 2016 – Above Right: Walk For Bihar Festival, Patna, India, 2016 – Below: „Cozy Life“, Runaway Festival, Belgrade, Serbia, 2020
You like to travel and there were numerous projects, but I think another important part which is also involved with journeys are the urban art events and graffiti jams. I’m sure you were involved in a lot of mural festivals in other cities. Just today I posted an artwork from you from the Belgrade RUNAWAY FESTIVAL in 2019. I think it was the fourth edition and PIJANISTA is the founder of this festival. Tell us more what you like about going to these kind of events.
Well, about the RUNAWAY, that was more like a project than a festival I would say. So I would call it a project, because for a festival, then you will need to have more people painting in the same time on the same spot and preferably there would be a party or something to also hang out with people. The wall that you published was more like a project and there was no event around. Also about the other artworks, there we painted in different moments. We painted three walls there in Dobrovića. But I didn’t get to hang out with people. And also the other project that he makes in his neighborhood in Bežanija. It’s also like he calls it a festival, but it’s not a festival. It’s actually a project where he beautifies the neighborhood. But you don’t have the activities that would be typical for a festival or a jam.
I just returned from Denmark from the event END OF THE LINE and that was something between a project and a festival. Actually, it was a graffiti festival, but we were invited for the first part of the event. That was painting on some wooden panels that were 5×5 meters. So we had lifts and everything. And it was eight or nine artworks, but on a different location from the graffiti jam. And the graffiti guys started painting once we finished. So we got the chance to hang out with the ones who came to visit our spot. But the main event was actually happening after we finished and it was in another area. Then if you want good examples of graffiti festivals or streetart festivals you should definitely visit UK. I’ve been this year to UPFEST in Bristol and to CHELTENHAM PAINT FESTIVAL and this is like another level. Like the energy that comes on these events it’s priceless. I mean this whole enthusiasm and good vibes and hanging out with the different people that have the same spirits. The same spirits and the same interest and they’re addicted to painting. It’s just really precious and I’m starting to miss that a bit because when you do large-scale murals it’s usually more like a project type where you are alone or in a very small group of people. Which is nice, I mean I made so many good friends this way, but it’s also good from time to time to go to a proper festival with parties and dinners all together and live music program and stuff like that.
Around three months ago we’ve been to Istanbul in Turkey, and they also have since a few years a really great urban art event in the city. The Mural Istanbul Streetart Festival. And there I think you painted a guy on a chair.
Well, Istanbul was really amazing. It was one of those projects where you really want to go and you are like looking at all the artwork that comes over the years from them. And then all of a sudden you get an invitation and you’re like, what? I was really excited for that project and very grateful for them having me there. And Istanbul was for quite a few years one of the best places to go if you wanted to paint large scale because the curation was just beautiful. I met there many really good artists and for me at that point to be there, it meant a lot and I was really happy. But I heard that they had some problems with the city. So the city tried to take over the brand from the main organizers who were running the festival, but after that, it didn’t really work well. I don’t know what’s happening right now. Did the original creators of Mural Istanbul get the right to organize it back or not. But while they were doing it, it was a really good project.
„Leaving your comfort zone is important. Being on the edge of the unknown makes you stay focused and the fear that is constantly there never lets you relax. You need to be sober, to live the moment, to feel the gentle breeze on your face, try to embrace it and finally…enjoy!“ – ARTEZ
It’s also interesting how you present your artworks on social media. For example on Instagram you have some photos but you put as well some making of videos on your channel. I watched a few, like the last one with the big crane and you go around the bulding. Then you can see, aha okay, now you make the first background layer. Then you go again and so on. So you make it step by step or part by part. It’s not that you make the first line and then the second or whatever, so you make the mural piece by piece. Still you have to go up and down a lot. So how is it to paint on this size and do you have in between to go completely down and look from far away if it’s correct? Or how do you know that the face looks alright and is in shape? Do you have some kind of structure to divide the building and you know from the sketch that this has to be there, or how do you do that?
I use Doodle Grid as many artists do. It’s a very simple technique for getting the proportions right. And then I try to move the least I can with the machine. Because I figured that the less you move with the machine, the more time you save. And if we are talking about a very big wall and a project that lasts for 10 to 12 days, I will definitely lose like 8 hours just on moving. So I’m very careful with not moving too much. But if you always move back and forth to see this and that, it can easily go like 16 to 20 hours of just driving in a lift and we don’t want that. We want to finish as fast as possible so actually the guys from Istanbul were joking with me. They were like, oh, you paint like Epson. So like an Epson printer. Because yeah, I would take all my paint with me and put the sketch and then put all the colors and then try to work on details and when everything is done in one spot, then I would move to the next. And I would do that until that part is nearly completed. So I cover basically the first layer, it’s actually 85% of the painting finished, like all the colors. And then I go down for the first time to see what I’ve done. Sometimes it takes two or three days just to cover the full surface. But then I go and I see like, oh, I need to change this or I need to change that. And I don’t think much about it while I’m painting. I’m just adding information on the world. Adding, adding, adding. And then when I go down, I look at it and then I make decision what I want to change. It’s never like thinking, oh, I don’t know what to do, so I’m going down and think. No, I don’t believe in that when it comes to large scale. I’m more like, I don’t know what to do. OK, I’m just going to do something like what I think, like instinctively, what I think could be a good move and then later on I decided if it worked or not.
What what comes next, what projects do you have in mind and where are you planing to go?
Well, for this year I have a one more project coming up. I’m going to Greece in two or three days to Patras for the ART WALK FESTIVAL and it’s one of the projects where you get a lot of freedom or at least I hope I will get a lot of freedom. So far they didn’t ask for the sketch or anything so it promises to be good. And after that I’m going back to the studio and work on developing my style and my career. I started the drawing a lot from persons in live painting. I like clean painting with live models and I am also working on anatomy. So I think this extra effort that I put into learning more about the human figure is something that is more typical for painters than for graffiti artists. I think it’s already making a big influence on my work and I hope it will continue helping me to evolve.
So people should check on your social media channels and there they can also see some of your artworks. They can see where they are because you always name the city or the place. Do you also have inside artworks like on exhibitions or is that too small for you?
No, the problem with the smaller artworks like the ones that are not in public space is that I find the scale, the size of surfaces that I paint on, canvases or boards or whatever, I find it really hard to handle. I mean, it’s not physically hard. Of course, physically it’s much easier. But the approach and the level of details, it’s way different because people tend to look at it differently. Like, if you look at the piece on the street, you won’t spend like five hours looking at it. You will maybe take a look and then it’ll just go like maybe 20 or 30 seconds, or if you’re really enthusiastic like one or two minutes, and that’s about it. But if you’re painting something that will be exhibited in a gallery or a museum or hang at someone’s home it really needs to be done in a different way. I think so and I’m still struggling with this, also I hope I will overcome this so I become also able to paint small things.
That’s really funny because others who maybe paint a small canvas they think, wow, how should I do such a big wall. And you say the other way around you do a big wall like 50 meters or one more and then you say for you it’s difficult to paint a small canvas.
And also if you look at the times that I spent for executing some of the walls. It’s like I maybe 600 square meters and I do that in 12 days. And then I spent three weeks on one canvas. That is like 170 centimeters. I think I’m doing something wrong, I just still gonna figure out what but I will manage it. I think it’s just the way how I like to do my thing with the big murals. I like to paint and it’s good to have challenges. And for me the small scale is a challeng.
That was a cool and interesting talking to you. We are excited about your next coming artworks somewhere else around the world and yeah, thank you very much for this great interview!
Artworks by ARTEZ on the Belgrade Map
Artworks by ARTEZ around the world
INFOTHEK
Artist: ARTEZ
Website: https://artezonline.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtezStreetArt
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artez_online
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/artezps
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Artez_online
Podcast: https://hearthis.at/radio-x-interviews/artez
Photographer & Drone: BORIS VATOVEC
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vatovec
Photo Credits: ARTEZ – SANJIN – PRODUKTIONSKOLLEKTIVET – MARKO MIHALINEC – BOJAN PAJIĆ
RECOMMENDABLE GRAFFITI SPOTS IN BELGRADE
>>> Hipodrom Hall of Fame <<<
>>> Runaway Festival <<<
>>> Beton Hip Hop & Graffiti Jam <<<
>>> Beowallz Graffiti Store <<<
>>> All Girls Graffiti Jam <<<
>>> Silosi Creative Space <<<
>>> Belgrade Design District <<<
>>> Festival Rekonstrukcija <<<
>>> Meeting of Styles – Sport School <<<
>>> Old Brewery Creative Space <<<
>>> Poenkareova Spray Walls <<<
>>> Ciglana Klub – Dev9t Festival <<<
>>> Faculty of Music Spray Space <<<
>>> Faculty of Dramatic Arts <<<
>>> Višnjićeva Masterpiece Wall <<<
>>> Visokog Stevana Spray Block <<<
>>> Vojvode Dobrnjca Backyard <<<
>>> Dorćol Platz Art Space <<<
>>> Vladislav Ribnikar Court <<<
>>> Most na Adi Track Wall <<<
>>> Kulturni Centar Dorćol <<<
>>> Takovska Spray Yard <<<
>>> Vladislav Ribnikar School <<<
>>> Radnička Graffiti Wall <<<
>>> Tandara Mandara Festival <<<
>>> Wolverine & Deadpool – METOD <<<
>>> Stencil Collection <<<
MORE ARTICLES ABOUT SERBIA
>>> Streetart Map Belgrade <<<
>>> Novi Sad – Kabel Hall of Fame <<<
>>> Novi Sad – Skejt Park <<<
>>> Streetart Kraljevo <<<
>>> Streetart Užice <<<