Pixação: São Paulo Signature

Despite laws, pixações have taken over São Paulo. Literally meaning ‘trace’ or ‘stain’ and dating back in its contemporary form to the mid-1980s, pixaçõe is a striking form of graffiti unique to the city that developed when Sao Paulo writers began creating imaginary calligraphic signatures influenced by hybrid blackletter, historic letterforms and the logos of heavy metal and hardcore bands. Claiming the architectural facades of the city as their canvas, the omnipresent pixações are a true calligraphic shock that have caused a deep aesthetic transformation of the face of Sao Paulo 

*Pixadores. A youngster, generally from an underprivileged social background, frequently living under precarious conditions in the outskirts of the city. A pixador uses pixação a form of protest, but at the same time, as a way of expressing his esthetic impulse.

* Pixação.noun. Of Brazilian origin, refers to writing in own, original codes, signs, symbols, and printing types. The hieroglyphics are printed with spray paint along extensions of walls, façades, and building exteriors in great metropolitan capitals. São Paulo, city where the movement originated, has the richest ex hibition of this kind in the world. The origin of the word comes from piche – tar, pitch.

 In 09-06-08, a group of 30 Pixadores invaded Choque Cultural Gallery (São Paulo-Brazil) in protest against the marketing, institutionalisation and domestication of Street Art, by the Gallerys and the Public Power.