History of Monumental Painting and Its Cultural Significance

Ancient rock art and modern street murals connect communities and convey powerful messages.

From cave paintings to cathedrals, wall decorations have evolved from simple doodles to large-scale compositions filled with complex symbols. Today, murals are part of the global art scene, urban environments and underground culture.

Monumental painting (muralism) is a category of art that refers to any type of image permanently applied to the wall of a building, ceiling, or any permanent structure. Generally, art historians divide murals into four categories: mural, graffiti, mosaic, and marouflage.

Fresco is a painting technique in which paint is applied to a wet, freshly plastered wall. The plaster absorbs the paint and dries organically with it. Marouflage paintings are first painted on a base material, such as canvas, and then fixed to the wall with glue.

A mosaic is an image assembled from small pieces of stone, glass or other similar materials, each replacing a brush stroke. Graffiti is a wall painting that can be done in countless techniques. Its main feature is its unplanned and unauthorized placement in public places. Graffiti is the most controversial form of monumental art, as many believe it cannot be considered an art form.

Monumental painting, as a broad concept, is probably the earliest form of human artistic expression. The oldest murals were cave paintings that included handprints, lines, and depictions of animals and people. The oldest figural rock paintings known to mankind date back 40,000 years.

Caves or building walls have proven to be the most durable remnants of human activity, and they have preserved ancient murals for centuries and millennia. The earliest murals were painted with clay and earth, sometimes in a stencil technique. The famous handprints found in Argentina were supposedly created by placing a hand against a wall and spitting pigment onto it through a tube.

As the methods and techniques of depiction evolved, wall art continued its existence. In Ancient Egypt, according to experts, there was no understanding of art as impractical decoration. Thus, every wall painting had a social or religious function. Murals left in tombs, for example, were supposed to show the deceased the way to the afterlife and facilitate all necessary rituals.

In Ancient Greece and Rome, frescoes and mosaics became incredibly popular ways to decorate sanctuaries, homes, and even public spaces. They served not only as decoration, but also as an indication of the purpose of a room, an advertisement, or a technique for visually enlarging a space.

Religious art was meant to teach believers about Scripture, help them memorize scenes and characters from it, and create an emotional connection by evoking feelings of compassion and devotion.

Since the Middle Ages, fresco has been the predominant technique for wall painting. Known since antiquity, frescoes proved durable and relatively easy to maintain, although they required the artist to work quickly. Mosaics were a popular, though considerably more expensive art form that required more specific skills and effort.

During the Art Nouveau era, the emphasis shifted from public and large-scale artworks to portable works that could be transported and owned by private collectors and institutions. Painting and sculpture were inherently more exclusive than murals and dominated the art scene for decades. The large-scale return of murals as a form of public art occurred only in the twentieth century with the development of urban planning and leftist ideologies.

In the 1920s, the Mexican government, formed after the recent revolution, decided to use artists as a driving force that would unite the nation and forge its common cultural identity. The painful experience of colonization had damaged both Mexico's indigenous culture and the self-image of its citizens.

Most of the educational and propaganda methodologies ran up against the fact that the population was largely illiterate and therefore unable to read and write. Under such circumstances, the government came up with the idea of developing public art in the form of murals. These images were meant to bring together different cultural codes and experiences in a form that everyone could understand and appreciate.

The most famous Mexican muralists were Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, Aurora Reyes Flores, Rufino Tamayo, and Jose Orozco. Each artist had their own unique style and influences, but all drew heavily on Mexico's pre-colonial culture and folk art. This combination of political ideas and folk culture was soon adopted by Mexican and Native American artists.

The accessibility and understandability of wall art made it an ideal tool for political expression and propaganda. Murals, both painted and mosaic, were an extremely popular form of public art in most regions of the Soviet Union.

Many of these murals reflected ideas drawn from communist ideology, but most importantly, they focused on glorifying labor, local cultures, and important milestones in Soviet history, such as achievements in space exploration. The decoration of buildings was an important part of creating the look of Soviet cities. According to historians, in the last decades of the Soviet Union, at least 5% of the construction budget was allocated to the creation and decoration of murals.

Many Soviet murals can still be found in Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia and other countries of the former USSR. Their preservation is an important task for local authorities, who strive to protect and preserve the remnants of cultural heritage.

In Ukraine, however, the situation is much more complicated. In July 2023, Ukraine passed a new law aimed at destroying remnants of Soviet ideology, including propaganda murals. However, some activists insist that these murals are part of contemporary Ukrainian culture and seek to protect at least these works of obvious artistic value.

Another place known for its political murals is Northern Ireland. These works of art first began to appear in the 1970s and reflect the social and political tensions in the region. Some murals focus on Irish political prisoners and the history of the Irish struggle for independence, while others declare their authors' loyalty to Britain.

The political message of each mural usually corresponds to the values of the particular community that authorized its placement in its neighborhood. In this way, they become not only a tool for disseminating ideas and commemorating victims, but also geographical and social markers that divide cities between opposing forces.

Graffiti is the most controversial and problematic form of wall art. Varying from offensive comments scrawled on the wall to large-scale multi-colored works of art, it exists somewhere between vandalism and pure artistic expression without the involvement of artistic institutions.

Even offensive comments may one day become valuable to archaeologists. The ruins of Pompeii, an ancient Roman city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, preserve many crude inscriptions of locals bragging about their sexual behavior (or condemning others for it) or complaining about poor service in nearby taverns.

Graffiti entered big art through the efforts of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, who began their creative practice with street art. By allowing these artists into the marketplace, the art world simultaneously legitimized graffiti as an art form and profited from something conceptually far removed from the traditional medium of galleries and museums.

Today, mural painting remains an important form of public art that can be found in most major cities around the world. In most cases, such murals are decorative or educational in nature, reflecting the life of local communities and contributing to their well-being. However, some areas of the world have a special iconic status when it comes to murals.

The remains of the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Berlin, is now one of the most famous sites in the world. Some images on it are protected by law, while others remain free zones for any artist wishing to leave their mark.

The best known contemporary muralists are the anonymous street artist Banksy, the activist Shepard Fairey and the French artist JR, who combines street art with photography. Their murals are usually political and address issues of discrimination, inequality, exploitation and cultural diversity.