Ministry -El Bocho – Kittyverbot

El Bocho – Kittyverbot

El Bocho is without a doubt one of the most high-profile urban artists in all of Germany. He is an anonymous urban street artist who has turned the city of Berlin into his own giant personal canvas. He mainly uses pastels, which are known for their size and quality, but he is also famous for his work with stencils and more standard graffiti. Over the years, El Bocho has created many unique figures and symbolisms that make his work instantly recognisable. The artist’s work can be traced back to 1997, and this year is often considered the beginning of El Bocho’s professional career.

He started on a small scale, mainly marking walls and making paint bombs on random surfaces on Frankfurt’s streets. Since then, El Bocho has developed and improved what would soon become his trademark: Huge cut-outs and installations, up to 20 feet high. While creating and studying on the streets, El Bocho worked as an illustrator and typographer by day. When he decided to focus entirely on street art and interventions, El Bocho stopped producing traditional graffiti. Instead, he made a big move to Berlin, where his art could take on impressive proportions. El Bocho wants to reach people who don’t visit art-specific venues like galleries or museums. He is also known for the fact that he never prints, as El Bocho personally draws every scene he sticks on the streets of Berlin.

His main characters:

It was in 2003 that El Bocho invented his own signature symbol, the famous doll Little Lucy. This charming figure was based on a Czech television series from the 1970s that the artist loved to watch as a child. El Bocho named her Little Lucy – Scourge of the Streets. Although El Bocho admittedly found the original figure rather boring, he nevertheless decided to take it on and give it a new coat of paint. The artist adopted a strong dash of dark humour and endowed his Little Lucy with the habit of trying to murder her cat! The unfortunate kitten can be found painted in washing machines, cooked as a spit or simply roasted in the microwave.

However, El Bocho also has a softer touch that has resulted in some interesting series such as that of his iconic Citizens. This series is based on portraits with small pop-up clouds filled with text, similar to the concepts of communicating ideas in comics. Depending on the type of representation and sentiment he chooses, the artist works with different types of paper. El Bocho works primarily with large-format cut-outs, however he also uses stencils and has recently started working with tiles. In addition to his brilliant style and skill, El Bocho also has an impressive record. In July 2019, he created the largest piece of tape art in the world in the German capital. Using 15,000 metres of tape, he created an 1100 m² work in front of the Stadtbad in Wedding. El Bocho is featured in national and international books, magazines, newspapers and exhibitions.