Not so long ago, we were in Hamburg to take graffiti pictures for the BombingScience.com, to report on the graffiti scene of the second largest city in Germany. Like most people arriving in this city, the first thing we did was to ride the train from the airport to downtown Hamburg, which is a nice ride because you can see tons of painted walls along the way. What immediately caught our attention on this train ride was the smiley faces. Two dots for the eyes and a small curved line for the mouth… as simple as it can be. But man, these faces where… everywhere. I mean, hundreds of them on that single line.
Just as we arrived at the central station in Hamburg and noticed that these smiley faces were also plastered on almost every surfaces in the street, we knew that something special was going on here. These faces are so easy to spray and style-less that they could be done by anybody, or everybody. I mean, was it the same guy painting them over and over or was it an army of vandals doing the damage? I had no clue.
Turns out it was the work of a single guy. And a 64 years old dude on top of that.
His moniker was Oz. And sadly, he passed away about 2 years ago. He was struck by a train, doing what he was doing relentlessly for the past 30 years: painting his smiley faces along the tracks.
Think of the most up writer you know and multiple the magnitude of his bombing by 10. Or even by 100. It gives you an idea of the smiley face phenomenon in this city. You might not like the “art” itself. Of course a smiley face is a smiley face. But in front of the magnitude of the what this guy did, we can only be impressed and pay our respect.
By the way, he did more than his smiley face too. His work goes beyond that and he is a kind of creative genius (you can see more of his art on this Wikipedia page). Or at least an impulsive artist with a drive that has no match. Mental illness is probably a part of the answer here. This guy dedication is simply on another level, a level that is not completely sane we must admit. He spent over 8 years in prison for graffiti offenses. Think about it. Eight years behind bars for spraying smiley faces. This is an incredibly high price to pay for his graffiti compulsion.
The streets are still full of his faces as you can see in our picture gallery below. Eventually they will fade away, but it will take years. Or even decades. But this artist made his mark on this city like no other and his memory will live on. We pay our homage here to this remarkable artist.
