Oz

Eggerstedtstrasse

When I first moved to Hamburg I have to confess that I was expecting a bit more of street art, being it such a famous city for it's underground scene.
Coming from Lisbon where the municipality offficially supports projects such as the brazilian Gémeos, here I have missed the usage of public spaces with fascinating art, being often taken by the normal Tags that you can find in any bigger city which I tend not to find too expressive or with a particular social impact.
It has taken me quite a time to find out the work of artists such as Oz which is taken to be the author of more than 120.000 graffitis all over the city.
Many of them are simply smileys followed by his signature or just his signature.
His main goal was to make the city more beautiful and make people smile. His work was more based on social issues and questioning of the values which rule our society, being most of them hard for a foreigner to understand it on first attempt.  Even though I find it quite fascinating how I found myself looking for references and asking people around what things meant. Somehow he has made me talk to people and arose them curiosity of why a foreigner was interested in his work.

Haubachstrsse

In September 2014 he was caught by a train when painting and died, causing a tremendous colective mourn among many of his admirers and supporters.

Stadtpark