Have you noticed our new facade? If not, it's high time you headed over to the Signal II exhibition and took the opportunity to check out the new mural.
Vincent Chignier, a French artist living in Šternberk, gave the facade its current look. The mural was created over three days as part of the 14th Street Art Festival in Olomouc. The Street Art Festival (SAFE) will take place this year from 25 June to 25 September 2021 and began with a mural on the Telegraph building, continued with street art in the arcade at the St. Moritz Church by the artist duo Die Geniesser and you can look forward to paintings at the Hvězdarna in Prostějov, the Šantovka Gallery, the Moravian Theatre and the S-Club in Olomouc. SAFE was created in 2015, loosely following on from the Live Graffiti Show, which it has been running since 2007.
Vincent Chignier (born 1988) is a painter and illustrator originally from Clermont-Ferrand, France, who settled in Šternberk, Czech Republic. He studied carpentry, but was increasingly drawn to art, painting and illustration, so he enrolled in a graphic arts school in Lyon and then went on to study mural painting in his native Clermont-Ferrand. He then completed his studies in fine arts at the Sorbonne in Paris in 2019. His work is heavily influenced by urban art and his favourite artists Caravaggio, Hieronymus Bosch, Henri Matisse and Basquiat. In the Czech lands, he has become very fond of the motif of costumed women from Hana, who have recently appeared not only in his paintings but even in a mural on the facade of the Telegraph.
Street art on our building depicts inventor, painter and sculptor Samuel Morse, who invented Morse code and the electric telegraph. It is complemented by the aforementioned women in costume, inspired by the 1960 sgraffito on Olomouc's main station by another Sternberg artist, Wilhelm Zlamal (1915-1995).
Text: Tereza Holoubková, Telegraph gallery
