Talking about Squadafum is also talking about counterculture. The brand emerges from clippings of the personal experiences of the friends who started Squadafum, from skateboarding to music, from art to militancy.
And being experiences mainly from the streets, there is no way to ignore the main actor of the gray city: the walls.
They are where the most genuine artistic expressions can be found, from artists who jostle each other in the dispute for a space to make their contribution. In this cupcake, we were always involved.
But long before São Paulo was considered a marginal artistic hub with its avant-garde graffiti, a lot of water rolled down.
Telling the story of pixação involves discussing what is actually considered pixação. An old and long debate.
Expression through paint on walls is something ancient. Without the pixadores of yesteryear, modern humanity would have understood little about ancient cultures.
And if cave paintings or Egyptian hieroglyphs are not enough as an example, because sometimes they function more like books telling stories than single messages, the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, in the distant year 79, put an end to doubts.
When the ashes were swept away from the place, not only Pompeii was discovered, a city founded around the 6th and 7th centuries BC, where today Naples, Italy is located. Several walls covered with graffiti were also revealed which, unlike hieroglyphs, leave no room for another interpretation - they were graffiti.
Wall with Graffiti in Naples Italy
around the 6th and 7th centuries BC
From poetic graffiti, like “Boyfriends are like bees, they have a life like honey”, to “subject to screeching” graffiti from other times, like “Who defecates here: beware of the curse. If you ignore it, may an angry Jupiter become your enemy”, the walls revealed that graffiti was painted for different purposes.
In addition to insults and political messages, a lot of whoring was graffitied there - mostly by straight men from other times, bragging about their fame as studs.
But several pixações were more direct and straightforward in their objective: just to demarcate territory.
What is the difference between “Satura was here on September 3”, on a wall in the ancient city of Pompeia, and any other tag on a wall in the Pompeia neighborhood, in the West Zone of São Paulo? Maybe only 2000 or so years.
Wall with Graffiti in Naples Italy
around the 6th and 7th centuries BC
Pixação, in the more modern context, especially on national soil, also has its origins with different purposes.
In the 1960s, with the Military Dictatorship, the walls of big cities were real stages for political demonstrations under paint. There was no better way out (perhaps no other) for a country where even the printing plants were controlled by agents of the Dictatorship.
But it was also during the Military Dictatorship, in the 1970s, that another pixador, with a different purpose, would further popularize the culture of throwing paint around. Antenor Lara Campos, known as “Tozinho”, just wanted to promote his own business as a breeder of Fila dogs, when he went around São Paulo spraying “Cão Fila K 26”.
His inspiration already indicated that he did not pioneer the idea of advertising using city walls. “Tozinho” himself said that he would have followed in the footsteps of Adhemar de Barros, a politician known for painting the walls with his name and number - a practice that would run out of control a few elections later and would end up being banned.
But the fact that “Cão Fila K 26” was an initiative without any authorization, in times when authorization was needed even to be standing in the street, made many consider “Tozinho” the pioneer of pixação in its most marginal sense.
Mr. Antenor Lara Campos
The history of humanity demonstrates the importance of the practice of expressing oneself through paint on walls. And starting from cave paintings to the city of Pompeii, the practice still seems to be a link of inspiration and reassembly of culture.
The “Cão Fila K 26” served as an impetus for an entire generation that would also make history using the walls. From the initiative of “Tozinho” to the consolidation of typography by the São Paulo pixos, there is a lot of history. And from this story, we drink from the source.
But from story to story, time gets long, so let's leave that other part for a future post.
Alright, walls!
