Textura: Valencia Street Art

We’ve seen a number of spectacular books surrounding the topic of graffiti. Last year, the Bay Area Graffiti ranked among our BEST awards. Now, from the streets of Valencia, Spain’s third largest city, comes a hotbed of vibrant street art, the best of which is featured in Textura: Valencia Street Art

We’ve seen a number of spectacular books surrounding the topic of graffiti. Last year, the Bay Area Graffiti ranked among our BEST awards. Now, from the streets of Valencia, Spain’s third largest city, comes a hotbed of vibrant street art, the best of which is featured in Textura: Valencia Street Art.

photographs of graffiti textures

Photographer Luz A. Martin, a native of Valencia, has been wandering the streets of her hometown documenting the artwork that brings the walls, alleyways and buildings to life. Utilizing rain gutters, window frames, doorframes and other such urban surfaces the city’s street artists work their images and designs into the city’s surfaces in a way that makes them seem like they’ve been there all along. Martin has fixated on this specific quality of Valencia’s streets and her photographs of graffiti textures are as interesting and visually compelling as the photographs of the pieces in situ.

typical spread of photographs of graffiti textures

The bilingual text comprises artist interviews with END, ESCIF, GRAFFILIA, JULIETA, NERO, ON_LY and SAM3 and essays that provide insight into the history of the city’s street art, connecting it directly to the long-standing seasonal celebration of Las Fallas.

photographs of graffiti textures

Textura also doubles as a pattern book with many of the graffiti texture photographs available as royalty-free images via download from the MBP website (For owners of the book only! Go.).

This beautifully produced book will make an endless texture and color resource for all visual creatives — aside from presenting a wonderful coffee table book and an ideal gift for those who appreciate vibrant art.

Luz A. Martin - Textura: Valencia Street Art
Textura: Valencia Street Art

By Luz A. Martin
144 pages, 8.25 x 10 inches (21 x 25.4 cm)
Casebound, Color throughout
Mark Batty Publisher

Thanks for reading

Fred Showker

Don’t forget … we encourage you to share your discoveries about favorite or famous graphic designers and illustrators with other readers. Just comment below, join the forums for discussion, or give me a tweet at Twitter/DTG_Magazine

About Luz A. Martin: Born in 1970 in Valencia, Spain, Luz Martin has worked in editorial fashion and portraiture for the past 10 years. Her photographs have been published in such places as The New York Times, Time Out London, El Pais, El Mundo and The Herald Tribune. In 2007 her photography book Campanas Vivas was released, celebrating the centuries old ritual of ringing bells in Valencia. A presentation of Textura and Martin’s photography will take place in Valencia in February of 2010 at the XVI Century cloister in the Museum Centre del Carme. Textura will be part of 100×100, an art exhibition featuring 100 artists from Valencia. In December 2010 she will showcase her project ‘Textura Bronze’ in a joint exhibition in Valencia.

Mark Batty Publisher (http://www.markbattypublisher.com) is an independent publisher dedicated to making distinctive books on the visual art of communicating, showcasing the visual power and innovation of contemporary culture in all of its varied poses. Today, the visual comes at us from more places than ever, and its dissemination is faster and more advanced every year. Books from Mark Batty Publisher capture this acceleration on the pages of every book. Affordable, well designed, thoughtfully created, and produced to last, MBP books are artful products that readers want to hold onto forever.