New York City Murals

The word mural is a Spanish adjective that is used to refer to what is attached to a wall. The term mural later became a noun. In art, the word mural began to be used at the beginning of the 20th century. In ancient Roman times, a mural crown was given to the fighter who was first to scale the wall of a besieged town. "Mural" comes from the Latin muralis, meaning "wall painting". This word is related to murus, meaning "wall".

Murals of sorts date back to cave paintings discovered in Borneo  believed to be 40,000–52,000 BP years old.  Other cave paintings were discovered in Southern France reaching back 32,000 years. Many murals have been found within ancient Egyptian tombs (around 3150 BC), the Oxtotitlán cave and Juxtlahuaca in Mexico (around 1200–900 BC) and in Pompeii (around 100 BC – AD 79).

The term mural became better known with the Mexican muralism art movement, think Diego Rivera. The first mural painted in the 20th century, was “El árbol de la vida”, by Roberto Montenegro.

I was going to post a handful of mural images I've taken over the years but discovered that I had way too many to hold your attention for very long. So, I chose one city. In 2022 we had the good fortune of spending ten days in New York City. We wandered through neighborhoods after arriving via subway. As we wandered through the streets we began to notice the crazy amount of artwork on the sides of buildings and walls. My iPhone spent barely any time in my pocket as I attempted to capture what I was seeing. Here is a smattering of what we saw.