A Street Art Gallery Grows on 26th

Street artists pain a wall with Bogotá's Eastern Hills as a backdrop. 

Bogotá is transforming several blocks of 26th Street west of Carrera Decima (across from the cemeteries) into a great graffiti art gallery.

Artists made proposals. The winners get between 10 and 20 million to do the work, altho one told me that award money barely pays for the paint.

Most of the works portray people who walk and bike along Calle 26.

Wonder how long until they get painted over or otherwise vandalized?

Skeleton animals walk the avenue. 

Calle 26 was broadened recently during the building of an express bus line to the airport. 

A merry monster mural. 

A babyface on Calle 26.v

A colorful cyclist. 

A cyclist rides east on 26th St. Wish it was always so emprty and peaceful. 

An indigenous woman's portrait. 

Jaime Garzon, a radio comedian who made fun of the wealthy and powerful and was assassinated near here in 1999. 

A huge mural, which was painted previously, condemns the Vietman War and then woke in on 

This mural memorializes victims of forced displacement in Colombia. 

A bicyclist photographs a mural of a woman with a flower on 26th St. 

Bicycling past new murals. 

Murals across from the Central Cemetery show people displaced by Colombia's violence. 

A mural of a baby overlooks a TransMilenio Station on 26th St. 

Murals portray the Union Patriotica Party, thousands of whose members were murdered by right-wing forces during the 1980s and '90s. 

The street art below is also on 26th St., just west of Calle Septima. The area is part of the Sunday/holiday Ciclovia, which is why so many bicyclists are pedaling past the murals.

Celebrating the coca leaf. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours, which offers graffiti bike tours.