Werens

One of the pioneers of graffiti in Catalonia: Werens, Ramon Puig. Catalan artist who has spent more than three decades filling the streets of Catalonia with color and controversy. The artist, trained at La Massana and at the London College of Printing, experienced the moment when the European graffiti movement emerged, a stream of foreign graffiti in the native born in the USA.

His urban art works are scattered across countless walls from all over. Places as diverse as Marrakech, Venice, Berlin, Bombay, New York, London, Lisbon, among many others, have seen their flowers grow from the cracks in the asphalt. But, the truth is that what Werens graffiti gives off is, beyond aesthetics, denunciation and demand.

Graffiti

If graffiti is the art that springs from the asphalt, from the foundations of damaged or abandoned buildings in cities around the world, Werens’ graffiti is a work of art that has been offered to the city of Sabadell in stages for more than twenty years. These are figures that climb walls, creatures that emerge from the cracks, characters that make us stop, sinuous imposing shadows on aesthetically uninspiring and muffled facades in our post-industrial town. His graffiti is colourful, spontaneous, dynamic, bold, assertive, and it is accessible art for one and all. Art that is not for sale, not hidden behind a security door or closed in a treasure chest. Abandoned art, with caution thrown to the wind, without drama, like a small boat left drifting with a gentle breeze, although often “special cleaning brigades” have embarked on sinking it after it’s just been launched. But not even in times of maximum, and I’d say frantic brigade activity has Werens’ graffiti stopped appearing, always in enthusiastic and constant evolution. His art is generously offered basically to all those who wish to, or are able to and may allow themselves to appreciate it – to all those who are capable of looking beyond the most rigidly set parameters.