"I Madonnari" - Italian street painting festival - Santa Barbara

Irina K

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Published on: Oct 14, 2021

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United States, Santa Barbara (US), Italy, Grazie (IT)

Many good things in life come to us by chance. Arriving in Santa Barbara, I did not expect to get to the festival.

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Street Art

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Short dive into history

Drawing on the streets began in Italy in the XXVl century and is a long tradition in cities of Western Europe. Artists, traveling with Catholic religious and folk festivals, using chalk, painted Madonna images on the streets. These artists became known as 'Madonnari' or street painters.

Street artists existed (and, I suspect, exist, but have not yet found information about it) from passers-by coins cast on their paintings as an evaluation of the work: work and talent.

The most famous festival takes place in the tiny town of Grazie di Curtatone, in Italy, where every year in August (since 1972) artists compete on the square in front of the huge cathedral, painting for twenty-four hours. I saw photos of several similar festivals on the Internet (the most famous is here - I Madonnari Festival).

In 1987, Katie Kouri, executive director of the Children's Creative Project, created the festival “I Madonnari” as a fundraising event to improve the quality of arts education programs in Santa Barbara County.

Where to stay

Hotel Lviv Chornovil Avenue, 7 Lviv

I Madonnari fest

The festival is called 'I Madonnari', which is translated from two languages, 'I am a street painter.' Madonnari, street painters from different, as I understand, countries, work in the square in front of the Mission, paint on the sidewalk, using pastels to create one hundred fifty bright colorful large-scale images.

Mission Santa Barbara

I was just going to spend hour or more walking the famous Square of the Franciscan Mission ... Seeing the tents, broken in front of the monastery, covering the towers of the bell towers, was upsetting. (However, I was more upset by the thought: 'how many people, I will not find parking, hate to squeeze through the crowd ...' - I lost the habit of it all that, I too spoiled by my suburban life) It turned out that I was incredibly lucky: an annual festival was held in Santa Barbara.

Where to eat

Shores Restaurant

★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★

1031 Harbor Blvd Oxnard, CA 93035

The Internet says that during the three days of the festival (and it is held on Memorial Day weekend, 25,000 people visit it. I believe, because there were really a lot of people, see for yourself. People walked, watched, photographed ...

And Italian food

There, in tents on a huge grassy lawn in front of the Mission, they prepared Italian dishes (I drove up and saw how they unloaded huge plastic containers of pasta from a small truck — after all, it was a festival of “Italian” street artists), the children enjoyed the ice cream and gelato, others sold all sorts of things: t-shirts, posters, postcards ... right there

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Returning to the square, I went, enjoying equally the paintings and artists. All paint in pastels, the multi-color of which is amazing.

Did you ever notice how the artists look like their paintings? Like here, just red cap is missing

And this artist should have a Vietnamese hat, although there is some similarity too.

And their clothes seem to be matched. In the pink-purple - pink-purple picture. Interesting, this is special? Or 'it just happened'? ('Sorry, love, it happened ...' - I give my head to the cut-off, no one remembers where I’m quoting from, a wonderful cartoon about Bluebeard was made a long time ago.)

So he just has to draw a gargoyles, what else .. (for some reason I thought that the proper name of the monster is 'gargoles', but I checked with the dictionary: gargoyles is correct).

And these girls themselves look like flowers - butterflies, in the picture. And sitting cross-legged - butterfly wing ...

When I saw it in the morning, it was clear that Madonnari was painting masterfully, but she did not expect such detailing. In the artist and the girl in her picture, the faces are remarkably similar...... Although I read in the accompanying explanation that the artist-Delphine Anaya-pasted the face of her niece, taking a selfie with a yak, into the plot of the classic original picture written by Wang Yi Guang. So that's why look like ...

Artists work alone ...

... or in different groups.

Two very young girls .. I watched, wondered: hedgehog? porcupine? mouse? ...... Maybe a hamster? Your options?

I was amazed by enthusiasm and concentration of all workers ... This is for us, visitors, a feeling of complete relaxation, for artists - tension, no, the wrong word, the intensity of work. Here they work from ten in the morning until six in the evening for three days. Work with crayons. Street painting is an art where drawings will disappear due to dew, wind, rain .. Not even with time, but almost instantly. What makes these people work like this? What makes them create art (I may like or dislike scenes, or color solutions, or something else, but this is art. And even Art, just this is his form: drawing with crayons on asphalt.)

Why did the artists not choose paints, canvases, paper - no matter what, but something more durable?