Street Art in Florence - Men-fish smoke pipe

Street artists, at least in Florence, love fish and sea creatures. You can find  many, perhaps it comes from the very suggestive idea that they "swim" in concrete. The magical sensation of the liquid world, without sound and gravity.

For the Babylonians, men-fish were very important; called Apkallu, they were semi-divine beings, emerged from the primordial abyss, sent by the god Enki to teach men arts and crafts, the moral code and the principles of civilization. In Greek mythology Triton, the man-fish, the man-mermaid, is the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea.  Depicted with green skin and fishtail legs, he follows his father and manages to calm storms by playing a shell horn, a beneficial deity. Below the image of Triton from a Hellenistic bas-relief of a Gigantomachy of the 2nd century AD. from Aphrodisias (Turkey), in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (photo by Giovanni dell’Orto 28.5.2006).

We do not know what our artist from via Alderotti had in mind, but his work shows us a predominantly fish being, of a white-blue fish color, the mythological green avoided. Only the face is human, with a very marked gaze with a potato nose and a small arm holding a smoking pipe. Splashes around give the idea of ​​movement, or rather of swimming. Classic technique by charcoal and spray paint can.

The work overlaps a previous yellow tag and an indefinable bluish being under the pipe, which could be by the same hand. The man-fish swims on the wall of the abandoned factory of the Officine Galileo, a Florentine story we will talk about in the future. Florence, via Taddeo Alderotti.