Street Artist in the Spotlight: PichiAvo
Valencia-based duo PichiAvo have built an internationally recognised practice by bringing two visual languages into direct conversation: classical Greco-Roman sculpture and contemporary graffiti. Formed in 2007 after meeting within Valencia’s graffiti scene, the pair combine backgrounds in Fine Art and Design with the instinct, colour and energy of urban painting.
PichiAvo, Escritor de los Mares, GraffitiStreet commission. Photo © GraffitiStreet.
Their work is immediately recognisable. Gods, heroes and mythological figures emerge through layers of tags, spray paint and fractured colour, allowing antiquity to collide with the contemporary city. Rather than placing classical art and graffiti in opposition, PichiAvo treat them as equally valid visual languages capable of occupying the same wall.
Classical Art Meets Graffiti
Mythology sits at the heart of PichiAvo’s practice. Athena, Poseidon, Perseus, Cupid, Zeus and the Three Gracesrecur across murals, sculptures and studio works, carrying stories that have survived for centuries into environments shaped by spray paint, architecture and street culture.
The classical figure provides structure, while graffiti introduces immediacy and disruption. Tags move across marble-like bodies, colour breaks through sculptural surfaces and monumental figures are returned to public space in a language that belongs unmistakably to the present.
PichiAvo have spoken about this fusion as something developed gradually through years of experimentation rather than as an instant stylistic decision. Their studio and mural practices remain closely connected, with techniques including aerosol, acrylic, oil, collage and gold leaf moving between walls, canvases and editions.
GraffitiStreet and PichiAvo: A Decade of Collaboration
GraffitiStreet’s relationship with PichiAvo dates back to our 2014 London launch, followed by bespoke commissions, exhibitions and street projects. In 2015, they joined our Underground exhibition, painted their King Robbo tribute in Shoreditch, and Perseus became their first hand-finished print with GraffitiStreet.
Perseus became their first hand-finished print with GraffitiStreet. Available via GraffitiStreet.
In 2017, we were invited by 5th Street Station in Charlottesville, Virginia, to curate their monumental Rivanna River by Poseidon, measuring 45 feet wide by 34 feet high.
Mythology Across the World
As PichiAvo’s practice expanded internationally, their classical figures began appearing across increasingly ambitious public settings.
In New York, they became the first European artists invited to paint the legendary Houston Bowery Wall, transforming one of the city’s most historically significant graffiti sites with monumental classical figures and contemporary lettering.
Their work has since travelled through Hawaii, São Paulo, Toronto, Berlin, Heidelberg, Manchester, Barcelona and Paris, each city providing a new architectural setting for the dialogue between antiquity and graffiti.
For the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, PichiAvo created a 930-square-metre triptych in Saint-Denis inspired by Myron’s Discobolus, bringing an ancient image of athletic movement into direct conversation with one of the world’s largest contemporary sporting events.
Beyond the Mural
PichiAvo’s practice has increasingly extended beyond painted walls into sculpture, installation and immersive digital work.
Their long relationship with Valencia’s Fallas reached a monumental scale in 2019 when they created the city’s 26-metre-high main falla. In 2026 they returned with Per ofrenar, an experimental Ionic temple inspired by the Temple of Athena Nike. Built from traditional Fallas materials and designed to be ceremonially burned, the work explored balance between classical art and graffiti, permanence and disappearance.
In 2025, GraffMapping at OFFF Barcelona pushed their imagery into another dimension, animating classical figures and graffiti across the façade of Disseny Hub through projection, light and movement.
Most recently, Athena Lefkos brought their visual language directly into Athens, creating their first monumental public mural in Greece and returning their reinterpretation of Athena to the city most closely associated with her mythology.
Related Reading: PichiAvo
GraffitiStreet’s 2015 interview with PichiAvo, the duo discuss the development of their classical-graffiti fusion, their differing backgrounds and the relationship between wall, canvas and print.
Escritor de los Mares documents one of GraffitiStreet’s earliest bespoke collaborations with the duo, while PichiAvo Pay Tribute to King Robbo in Shoreditch captures their London street practice in 2015.
PichiAvo on the Houston Bowery Wall follows the duo to New York, where their classical figures took over one of the most important walls in graffiti history.
In Athena in Barcelona, the goddess becomes a symbol of knowledge, protection and female empowerment, while Poseidon in Barcelona continues the mythological dialogue inside the same architectural project.
Celebrating the Olympic Spirit in Paris explores their monumental Discobolus-inspired work for Paris 2024, while PichiAvo x GraffMapping follows their imagery into projection and motion at OFFF Barcelona.
More recently, Per ofrenar and From Temple to Ashes document the complete life cycle of their 2026 Fallas installation, while Athena Lefkos brings their mythology back to Athens.
More Artists in the Spotlight
For another practice bringing established art history into contemporary street culture, explore Hua Tunan, whose energetic murals draw upon the traditions and techniques of Chinese ink painting. Discover Hunto for a graffiti practice shaped by Cubism and the influence of Picasso, or Ruben Sánchez, whose Mediterranean colour and fragmented figures similarly bridge fine-art influence and street culture.
Discover PichiAvo at GraffitiStreet
GraffitiStreet has worked with and documented PichiAvo for more than a decade, from early London commissions and street murals to editions, original works and exhibitions at our Chichester gallery.
Pichiavo – Cupid Diaspasis B. Available via GraffitiStreet.
Explore PichiAvo at GraffitiStreet to discover currently available original works and editions, or contact GraffitiStreetfor acquisitions, sourcing, mural enquiries, commissions and private viewings.
Visit GraffitiStreet Gallery, 25A West Street, Chichester, West Sussex, England PO19 1QW.