For the past few days, the famous Brazilian muralist Eduardo Kobra, 47, worked day and night to finish by September 15 a new mural measuring 45 ft x 78 ft (3606 sq ft) on one of the exterior walls of the United Nations Headquarters, in New York. The wall is situated on E 42nd St & 1st Ave. According to Kobra, it is the first time that the UN has authorized an artistic intervention on the external walls of its complex in its 70 years of existence.
The unprecedented initiative of bringing street art to the UN’s wall was approved by the UN Committee, which recognized that Kobra’s art “is in line with the ideals of the United Nations”.
The mural comes at a very important moment. The seventy-seventh session of the General Assembly takes place from September 13 to 27 under the theme, “A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges.” Representatives from 193 countries, most of them world leaders, will discuss issues such as post-Covid reconstruction, the war in Ukraine, sustainability, and human rights.
“After receiving the invitation, I researched the theme of the General Assembly and I realized that it converges with issues that are increasingly part of my work, especially sustainability. Then, I created an art where a father hands over the Earth to his daughter, trying to contribute to the reflection on which planet we want to leave to the next generations”, explains the artist.
Born in 1975 in São Paulo, Brazil, Kobra has become one of the most recognized muralists today, with works on 5 continents.
Since the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, he holds the record for the largest graffiti mural in the world – first with ‘Etnias’, painted to celebrate the event, with 2,500 square meters; mark surpassed by himself in 2017, with a work in honor of chocolate that occupies a wall of 5,742 square meters on the margins of the Castello Branco Highway, in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. One of his most famous works is ‘O Beijo’, created in 2012 on the High Line in New York – erased four years later. It is a colorful reinterpretation of the image made by the American photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995) on August 13, 1945, when people took to the streets to celebrate the end of World War II.
But his first mural outside Brazil was in Lyon, France, in 2011. At the time, he had been invited to illustrate a wall in a neighborhood that was undergoing a process of revitalization. He used his “Muros da Memória” approach to help with historical appreciation of the region. Since then, he has painted in countries such as Spain, Italy, Norway, England, Malawi, India, Japan, United Arab Emirates, in addition to several North American cities. If you are in New York, don’t miss the opportunity to see the work of this great artist. The mural at the UN headquarters will be on display for about 3 months, until December 2022.