Our Favourite Street Art Animals

There are multiple ways to explore the world of street art. Here, we have decided to bring you on a tour of where you can find a street art animal across the world, and the artists who create these works.

Nowadays, street art is a richly varied art form. Indeed, it encompasses different techniques, styles and imagery; from calligraphy to hyperrealism, illustrations to stencils and even collages. Street art turns cities and the multitude of different canvases that they offer into a big playground for artists wanting to revitalize or make us question our daily life, and help us rediscover our environment. Featuring animals in street art can be paradoxical since it shows a desire to reintroduce nature in the urban landscape through a form of self expression that only humans possess the ability to create – art.

The result is often breathtaking, though…

1. ROA

It is impossible to talk about street art animals without talking about Belgian street artist ROA, whose work revolves entirely around animals.

Instantly recognizable, ROA’s gigantic murals are made up of black and white animal drawings chosen specifically for the environment of the city they are located in: foxes, crocodiles, rabbits, squirrels and more. If you think they appear to be sleeping, ROA’s animals are in fact all dead, and the artist piles their bodies up in a macabre sense of aesthetics. Sometimes, he depicts animal’s skeletons or organs.

ROA is addicted to travelling and he adds new species to his inventory in every place he goes. His work is like an open air natural history museum that questions the relation between humans and animals.

2. Alexis Diaz

Alexis Diaz is a Puerto Rican artist who scatters his very detailed murals of surreal animals in every corner of the planet, from Paris to Montreal, Mexico and Vienna. His style is also very distinctive: skillfully drawn animals made with black ink (resembling engravings) on plain and colorful backgrounds.

Alexis Diaz’s work is surrealist, and depicts combinations of animals that the artist chooses based on the ecosystem of the location he is working in.

Paris boasts one of his works on rue Lémon in the 20th arrondissement, which he created in 2013.

3. DALeast

This street artist is from China, and he started spraypainting cities of the world in 2004, from Miami to London, Johannesburg, and Los Angeles.

DALeast’s techniques are very visually stimulating: from an interlacing of what looks like metallic wires emerge figures in motion, most frequently animals, that he considers with a lot of empathy as indispensable creatures for the well-being of the planet. He generally works on monumental murals, which makes DALeast’s dynamic work all the more powerful.

For a couple of years now DALeast has been in a relationship with FAITH47, another famous international street artist, also included in this list.

4. Faith47

FAITH47 is an internationally renowned street artist from Cape Town. She has been practicing street art for over 15 years and her murals can be seen in every big city in the world. Through her work, FAITH47 wants to disarm strategies of “Realpolitik” to promote personal and individual truth. Her work bears a strong spiritual dimension and can be defined as an existential quest.

5. Nychos

An Austrian street artist fascinated by anatomy, at the age of 6, Nychos saw the corpse of a lamb in a bin. Instead of being repelled, he was attracted by the beauty of the scene, which determined his future aesthetics and inspiration. His art is strongly influenced by his dreams and his psychological states: suspected of having epilepsy, he once got into a serious car accident which had him under medical surveillance for 9 months.

His cartoonish works are inspired by the cartoon imagery of the ’80s. They represent dismembered animals and people in bold colors. His art is funny and disturbing at the same time, since he dismembers foxes and rats but also Mickey Mouse or Sponge Bob, with a fascination for rabbits- the animals who showed him his artistic path in a dream.

6. Li-Hill

Li-Hill is a Canadian artist who works with paint, stencils, illustrations as well as sculpture. As a street artist, he makes monumental murals and tackles the topics of industrialisation, scientific progress and the relationship between humans and nature. His works are dynamic and question the fast changes of our modern time. His animal drawings tend to be a clever mix of realism and abstraction.

He has already exhibited in national institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and has created murals in Australia, Thailand and even China.

7. Dzia

Dzia is a Belgian artist who entered the street art scene only a couple of years ago, though his distinctive geometric animal murals have built him a strong reputation already. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Antwerp, and he also works on sculpture and taxidermy. The CopyZine magazine is another creation of his, a handmade publication whose price varies depending on the production cost. Each edition contains original drawings by Dzia, or other artists he collaborates with.

8. Arlin

A 28-year old Brazilian street artist who started making street art in his hometown of Tatui in Sao Paulo in the early 2000s, Arlin has previously worked as an artistic director for an advertising agency. He started to combine his passions for graphic design and graffiti in 2010.

His architectural style is the result of synthetic and fragmental aesthetics inspired by technology and the modern world.