Moscow announces graffiti competition

The Moscow city administration will hold a competition to find the city’s best graffiti artists, Moscow First Deputy Mayor Petr Biryukov has announced. “Young people always want to paint things on walls,” Biryukov told Interfax news agency today, as quoted by Vesti.ru. “Let them do it, only under control… It’s better that they paint something really beautiful.”

Applications will be accepted in the form of sketches, and winning proposals will appear legally on the sides of public buildings, Biryukov said. The competition will take place over the next month. Graffiti artists must paint the same design they submit to the city, and their works will not be removed.

Biryukov noted that the city’s efforts to battle graffiti were “a headache.” Within days of repainting a wall, usually that of an electrical substation or heating facility, new designs appeared. “You can’t post a policeman in front of every wall,” he noted stoically. Several residential buildings in Moscow have already been decorated with large-scale paintings by independent artists.